What is plant-based or vegetarian food?

Question

Is there a Latin adjective which means "vegetarian" or "plant-based" and can be applied to food? In this context, I don't need to make a distinction between vegetarian and vegan, for example; I just want something to indicate that food is based on plants. I want to apply the adjective to a meal or a food item, not a person or a diet. There is a separate question for diets.

I don't know how to derive "plant-based" in Latin. A new coinage is fine, as long as it is based on attested ideas of derivation or borrowing. Perhaps it would be easier to derive within Greek and then borrow to Latin? I pose no era restrictions here. I just want a way to say "today's dinner is entirely plant-based" and other similar phrases.

Answer 1

I had thought that the adjective (h)olitorius, from the noun (h)olus, might work, since the meaning is 'of or concerned with vegetables.' But after looking at the attestations in the dictionaries and going through the search results on PHI, it doesn't appear that it was ever (at least in the extant literature, of course) used to describe food. It's mostly used as part of the name of the Forum Holitorium.

My new suggestion is hortulanus, 'of or belonging to a garden.' This is most commonly used, in its masculine forms, as a word for 'gardener'; but it also shows up in the name of a dish in Apicius (De re coquinaria 8.7.14):

Porcellum hortulanum: porcellus hortulanus exossatur per gulam in modum utris. mittitur in eo pullus isiciatus particulatim concisus, turdi, ficetulae, isicia de pulpa sua, lucanicae, dactili exossati, fabriles bulbi, cochleae exemptae, malvae, betae, porri, apium, cauliculi elixi, coriandrum, piper integrum, nuclei, ova XV superinfunduntur, liquamen piperatum [ova mittantur tria]. et consuitur et praeduratur. in furno assatur. deinde a dorso scinditur, et iure hoc perfunditur. piper teritur, ruta, liquamen, passum, mel, oleum modicum. cum bullierit, amulum mittitur.

Pig à la Jardinière

The pig is boned through the throat and filled with quenelles of chicken forcemeat, finely cut roast thrushes, fig-peckers, little sausage cakes, made of the pig's meat, Lucanian sausage, stoned dates, edible bulbs [glazed onions] snails taken out of the shell and poached mallows, leeks, beets, celery, cooked sprouts, coriander, whole pepper, nuts, 15 eggs poured over, broth, which is spiced with pepper, and diluted with 3 eggs; thereupon sew it tight, stiffen, and roast in the oven. When done, open the back of the pig and pour over the following sauce: crushed pepper, rue, broth, raisin wine, honey and a little oil, which when boiling is tied with roux.

(Translation from LacusCurtius)

Obviously, this dish is hardly vegetarian; however, in modern Italian cookery, dishes that are, if not totally vegetarian, at least very decidedly vegetable-based are sometimes referred to by using the descendent of this word – e.g., penne ortolano or rigatoni all'ortolana.

Answer 2

herbidus, a, um, adj. = grassy;

herbifer, era, erum, adj. = full of herbs

'hodie cena nostra est herbosa'= today our dinner is herbaceous.

Answer 3

For actual vegetarian comestibles, I'd use something like oleredenda (olus, -eris + edo). It contains the essential ideas of 'vegetables' and (through the gerundive form) 'fitness to be eaten', which seem to me the very essence of vegetarianism.

For the adjective that you are actually trying to find, surely oleredendus would fill the bill?

[I realize that you aren't looking for a word for a person or a diet, but for completeness I suggest, if the need should arise, oleredarius.]