Re: Argh! I've been baited!

[Jeanette Gugler <jgugler@mindspring.com>]

Poster: Jeanette Gugler <jgugler@mindspring.com>

At 22:45 08/14/98 EDT, Rutlands@aol.com wrote:
>
>Poster: Rutlands@aol.com
>
>In a message dated 8/14/98 1:04:12 PM Eastern Daylight Time, nix@iolinc.net
>writes:
>
><< I'll not give a way sources (except privately) but you can document
> floral and culinary examples of Potatoes, tomatoes, and peppers (not
> bell) yams and other foods, wing nuts and threaded screws, folding
> knives, and resin type plastics ans well as rubber for jewelry and
> padding, candle wax from flowers and trees, and many other little
> oddities. 
> 
> I hope someone feels inspired.
>
>OK, now... I know that the 1598 ed. of Gerard's Herball documents potatoes,
>tomatoes (red AND yellow), yams, peppers. I used to bait M. Jaelle myself
with
>the tomatoes. A lot of the gardening stuff the Americas had was available at
>least in the literature by late period-- remember, we're talking over a
>hundred years between 1492 and 1600.  Whether it was available in actual fact
>is another matter, as she would probably say, but what the snort.....
>
ok.  You've documented period gardening use.  But culinary usage?  SOME
people claimed tomatoes were poisonous.  Not all?  Though I have heard
hypothesized (ie cannot verify) tomatoes were eaten first in Arabic areas?

I've rather been more interested in pre-16th century foodstuffs.  Maybe
because it is more challenging.  And avoids the problem of when what was
brought over the waters and in what form.  Still lots became available via
the Crusades.

>The REAL trick (he said viciously) is growing what they had then.  Period
>varieties of apples, pears, other fruits and probably some vegetables are out
>there commercially, and many more noncommercially.  Consider gathering things
>wild   (first making SURE you REALLY KNOW what you're gathering)-- a wild
>species is probably (not always) the same from then to now.  Consider
>skirret-- a root vegetable not grown commercially now, but eaten widely (?)
>then.  There is a commercial source for the seed, if one cares to grow it.  
>     Hee, hee, hee... Always make sure the bear you bait is chained to the
>post.  James of Rutland
>
Hm.  Period potatoes were probably small, like our boiling potatoes.  I
thought yellow tomatoes were a relatively recent variant.  Peppers?  ah
habeneros, etc.? Yams? (but not sweet potatoes?)  And how, I wonder were
they cooked?

I, for one, have seen primary evidence that cauliflower was sold in period
(late period) as a food source.  But I am not at all sure how it was served
as I haven't come across recipes using it -- but that's not uncommon for
vegetables and I may be telling people something they already know as I
haven't YET done in depth recipe searches.

Thank you.  Culinary history just became a fascinating subject (as opposed
to merely interesting) -- how the Crusades and later the age of exploration
changed eating habits by making certain foodstuffs more available.  Or how
climate change or disease made others rare.  Oh boy, a whole area opens up!

>P.S.-- I LIKE this thread and will contact you about the other stuff.  For
the
>first time in weeks of sorting through gossip I'm going to learn something.

I agree!!  Though now I think I'll have to join a Cooks mailing list I came
across to find out what all they know.  Not another mailing list!  (Tomorrow)


Theodora von Schmetterlingswald		jgugler@mindspring.com
	Elvegast, Windmaster's Hill
Argent, a fess azure, ermined argent, 
between three pine trees couped sable and a butterfly azure.

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