[Ansteorra] period tomatoes
Stefan li Rous
StefanliRous at austin.rr.com
Fri Jan 21 22:44:01 PST 2005
On Jan 20, 2005, at 12:11 PM, elizabeth at crouchet.com wrote:
>> Please pardon the intrusion, but I received an email today that my gut
>> tells me is full of misconceptions and inaccuracies.
>>
>>>> Those with money had plates made of pewter. Food with high acid
>>>> content caused some of the lead to leach onto the food, causing
>>>> lead poisoning
>>>> and death. This happened most often with tomatoes, so for the next
>>>> 400 years or
>>>> so, tomatoes were considered poisonous.
> I'll jump in here.
>
> Tomatoes are a member of the Nightshade Family. We all know about
> "deadly
> Nightshade". The plant, all it's green parts and even the immature
> fruits are poisonous.
> The cows or other livestock would eat the plants and die and so
> everyone was
> convinced tomatoes were poisonous, no without reason.
>
> Interestingly, when the fruit matures, just before or as it turns
> color, the deadly
> compounds are converted and are no longer poisonous. That is why you
> can eat "fried
> green tomatoes" but you must be careful to select only mature ones. I
> just wait until they
> turn color.
>
> I also believe that in period tomatoes were yellow not red. They were
> referred to as
> "golden Apples" or maybe that term came later but certainly before
> tomatoes were a
> normal part of our cuisine.
>
> So tomatoes as part of a normal diet were quite controversial for a
> long time. Benjamin
> Franklin spent part of his life convincing people that tomatoes were
> not poisonous. He
> was apparently successful since the tomato has become a staple in many
> cuisines
> certainly since that time.
For some more info on the tomato and it use in late period, folks might
be interested in these Florilegium files in the FOOD-VEGETABLES
section:
tomato-hist-art (18K) 2/ 1/99 "You say tomato I say Xitomatl" by
Lord
Xaviar the Eccentric.
tomatoes-msg (34K) 1/17/05 Tomatoes in period.
16C-Tomato-art (16K) 9/ 5/02 "Sixteenth Century Italian and
Spanish
Tomato References" by Johnnae
llyn Lewis,
Helewyse de Birkestad, and
Brighid ni
Chiarain.
Stefan
--------
THLord Stefan li Rous Barony of Bryn Gwlad Kingdom of Ansteorra
Mark S. Harris Austin, Texas
StefanliRous at austin.rr.com
**** See Stefan's Florilegium files at: http://www.florilegium.org ****
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