Rocket or arugula? How a salad vegetable mapped the Italian diaspora

By Matt Absalom, Senior Lecturer in Italian Studies, The University of Melbourne

If you watch American cooking shows, you’ve likely experienced “salad confusion”. You see a chef preparing what looks like rocket, but they call it arugula.

It’s the same plant (Eruca sativa). It has the same peppery bite. So why do English speakers use two completely different names?

The answer isn’t just a quirk of translation. It is a linguistic fossil record revealing the history of Italian migration.

The name you use tells us less about the vegetable and more about who…

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