Farro / ˈ f ær oʊ / is a grain of any of three species of wheat , namely einkorn , emmer , or spelt , sold dried and cooked in water until soft. It is used as a side dish and added to salads, soups and stews.
8-503: The English word is borrowed directly from Italian farro , first documented in English in 1828 when the botanist Samuel Frederick Gray mentioned it. It derives from Latin far, farris (spelt, grain). Farro is made from any of three species of hulled wheat (those that retain their husks tightly and cannot be threshed ): spelt ( Triticum spelta ), emmer ( Triticum dicoccum ), and einkorn ( Triticum monococcum ). In Italian cuisine,
16-614: A Supplement to the Pharmacopoeia , published in 1818 with several subsequent editions. In 1819, he became co-editor of the London Medical Repository , to which he contributed many articles on medical, botanical, and other topics. He published, in 1823, The Elements of Pharmacy and, in 1828, The Operative Chemist , both practical reference works. Gray's major text of interest today is The Natural Arrangement of British Plants , published in two volumes in 1821. The authorship
24-502: A London seedsman . He received no inheritance and, after failing to qualify for medicine, turned to medical and botanical writing. He married Elizabeth Forfeit in 1794 and moved to Walsall , Staffordshire , where he established an assay office before he moved back to London in 1800. He set up an apothecary business in Wapping , which failed within a few years. Then, he seems to have maintained himself by writing and lecturing. Gray wrote
32-419: Is disputed, and his son, John Edward Gray, later claimed to have done most of the work, but that was not supported by his grandson. The book itself is innovative, being the first British flora to employ Antoine Laurent de Jussieu 's natural system of plant classification, an improvement on the artificial classification of Linnaeus . Probably, that was what made it be poorly received by conservative botanists of
40-526: The day. The Natural Arrangement of British Plants also included substantial sections on fungi , then classed as cryptogamic plants , introducing many new genera , including Auriscalpium , Coltricia , Leccinum , and Steccherinum , which remain in current use. Despite its recognised nomenclatural importance today, it was neglected by British botanists after its publication for "its idiosyncrasies, anti-Linnaean character, unorthodox nomenclature, narrow generic concepts and contemporary hostility to
48-503: The terminology for these three wheat varieties is generated by the difficult history in the taxonomy of wheat and by colloquial and regional uses of the term farro . For example, emmer grown in the Garfagnana region of Tuscany is locally known as farro . Some English speakers use farro to mean steamed or boiled grain presented as salad and similar dishes, whereas in Italy it means
56-413: The three grains, individually or together. Farro is sometimes translated as "spelt" in English, but this is only one of three possibilities. Samuel Frederick Gray Samuel Frederick Gray (10 December 1766 – 12 April 1828) was a British botanist , mycologist , and pharmacologist . He was the father of the zoologists John Edward Gray and George Robert Gray . He was the son of Samuel Gray,
64-489: The three species are sometimes distinguished as farro grande, farro medio, and farro piccolo . Emmer is the most common variety of farro grown in Italy, specifically in certain mountain regions of Tuscany and Abruzzo . It is considered to be of higher quality for cooking than the other two grains and thus is sometimes called "true" farro. Spelt is much more commonly grown in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. Confusion about
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