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I reached for the goblet and trailed my balloon sleeves through the sparrowgrass sauce.

“It is my fault,” Father said, cutting into a sparrowgrass spear.

A serving maid whisked away my uneaten sparrowgrass and replaced it with scallops and tomato aspic.

On Father’s plate and mine was sparrowgrass covered with a tarragon-mustard sauce.

We see him discovering samphire, the salty sea-asparagus, or “sparrowgrass,” of Norfolk mud flats—a contradictory plant dependent on sweeping tides, which gathers silt and sand in its stems and creates dry land on which it cannot grow.