ANST - Period ... tofu?

Mark.S Harris rsve60 at email.sps.mot.com
Fri Feb 26 15:16:09 PST 1999


karl muller wrote:

> tofu is chinese. marco polo was in china in about 1280 to 1295. (he was
> in at the chinese court of fifteen years.) even so, the silk road
> carried many items and foods from china to constanstinopole, to europe.
> things like oranges, roses, spagetti. i seem to remember the peak of
> business on the silk road accured during the han dynasty (around 600AD i
> think). so tofu may have been introduced to spain by 1300. you may want
> to check my dates just to be sure.

While the silk road may have brought items other than spices to Europe
before or in the Middle Ages, I don't believe the three items you 
mention would be any of these.

1)Roses. Native to southern Europe and the Middle East from Clasical 
Times. There is probably more than you wish to know about period
roses in this file in the PLANTS, HERBS AND SPICES section of my
Florilegium:
roses-art         (36K)  5/15/97    "Sacred Iron Posies" by Daniel del Cavallo.
                                       (medieval roses).

2) Pasta. Although a common myth that it was brought back from China
by Marco Polo, there is plenty of proof that it was in use in Europe
from well before his time. Possibly he brought back one type of pasta
or the idea came from China in ancient times, but I doubt it. See this
file in the FOOD section for more details:
pasta-msg         (65K)  8/26/98    Period pasta. Period referances. Recipes.

3) Oranges. There is an orange from China (Mandarin Orange?) but it was 
unknown in Europe until very late in period. I believe the orange used
in medieval Europe originally comes from the Middle East. I'd check
Waverly Root's "Food" for more details (which I don't have here with me
at work). I think there are some referances to oranges in this file in
the FOOD section of my files:
fruits-msg       (174K)  8/31/98    Medieval fruits and fruit dishes. Recipes.

As a sidenote: The orange used in medieval Europe appears to have been
much more sour and have a much thicker skin than what we commonly find
today.

If you, or anyone else, have info contradicting any of this, please let me know
so I can update my files.

Lord Stefan li Rous
stefan at texas.net

(Oh yes, the Florilegium is at: http://www.pbm.com/~lindahl/rialto/rialto.html)
============================================================================
Go to http://lists.ansteorra.org/lists.html to perform mailing list tasks.



More information about the Ansteorra mailing list