First Vegetables Introduced to Babies a Hundred Years Ago

First vegetables for babies
Source: Order of the Eastern Star Relief Fund Cook Book (Michigan Grand Chapter, 1923)

A hundred-year-old cookbook recommended that the best first vegetables for a baby are strained spinach, asparagus, peas, and young carrots. I can’t remember which vegetables were introduced first when my children were young, but the Strong 4 Life site says:

Great first veggies to try:

  • Pureed carrots
  • Pureed squash
  • Pureed broccoli
  • Pureed sweet potatoes
  • Pureed green beans

12 thoughts on “First Vegetables Introduced to Babies a Hundred Years Ago

  1. Strained peas – I loved them. My sister not so much. My mother painted the walls of the kitchen that color of green since it hid the stains of spit out peas for her and spinach for me…

  2. I never thought of asparagus – maybe it was something that people grew in their gardens back then. A perennial that kept on giving every year. For my own kids it was lots of peas, carrots, cauliflower, broccoli and sweet potato.

    1. It makes sense that people probably grew asparagus in their gardens a hundred years ago – and then thought about feeding it to their infants. Asparagus used to also grow wild (or semi-wild) in fence rows. I can remember a book about foraging for foods that was around when I was young called “Stalking the Wild Asparagus.”

  3. Similar choices to the ones I made – apart from asparagus which is only in season for one month, unless you buy in from Peru, which of course I don’t. And purée seem to have gone out of the window too, according to my daughter. It’s all about getting very messy and feeding yourself!

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