HERB - Fw: Re: SC - Celery

[Christine A Seelye-King]

Anyone care to comment?
Christianna

--------- Forwarded message ----------
From: LYN M PARKINSON <allilyn at juno.com>
To: sca-cooks at Ansteorra.ORG
Date: Fri, 7 May 1999 14:48:17 -0500
Subject: Re: SC - Celery

>>I suspect that celery may have been seen mostly as a medicinal herb,
rather than as a vegetable, but then candying such an herb would be a
fairly likely method of preserving it and maximizing its medicinal
qualities. Many candies were developed, essentially, as pills and
lozenges.<<

Since sugar was originally purchased in an apothecary's shop--first
mention of it in 14thc. Italy--that fits very well.  And, most of the
recipes developed after the trading of sugar became available call for
the additon of sugar to many dishes we would not put it in, today.  That
had something to do with humoural theory, as sugar is the perfect food
under that doctrine--no argument, here!--but likely had it's 'roots' in
the bitter flavor of the wild and semi-domesticated herbs and vegetables.

  _Medicine & Society_, Rawcliffe, lists some of the herbs and vegetables
which were given humoural 
qualities and used in this way, but celery appears in the plan for the
kitchen gardens at St. Gall, along with other vegetables and herbs in the
18 great beds--everything from onions to cornpoppy.  It might have been
eaten as a vegetable, raw or cooked, such as the onion; might have just
been cooked in with a mixture as early carrots; or might have been used
simply as flavoring, as with chervil.  Or, all of the above.

The _Regularis Concordia_ that Hagen cites calls for the midday meal, the
chief meal, to consist of 2 cooked dishes, to be eaten as an
accompaniment to bread.  There was to be a 3rd dish of fresh vegetables
and fruit, if available.  In her second volume, Production &
Distribution, she mentions celery as known in Britain from the Roman
period, and "there is evidence for celery from late Saxon sites in
Wincester.  It was cooked and eaten every day according to AElfric Bata"
and there's more, one of which is medicinal--"an early 11thc. cure
recommends that it be taken in wine for toothacche."

There was a good bit of cross use of all the herbs and vegetables between
the kitchen and the dispensary from the garden plans, herbals, and
'leechbooks'.

I have seen Chinese celery.  I haven't seen 'lovage', though.  ;-)  I do
think that, as it appeared so early in garden plans, that sucessive crops
might have bred a more appealing vegetable than the wild version, so that
it would have been put to more uses.  We need a botanical geneticist
historian on this list!  

Regards,

Allison
allilyn at juno.com, Barony Marche of the Debatable Lands, Pittsburgh, PA
Kingdom of Aethelmearc

___________________________________________________________________ You
don't need to buy Internet access to use free Internet e-mail. Get
completely free e-mail from Juno at http://www.juno.com/getjuno.html or
call Juno at (800) 654-JUNO [654-5866]
=========================================================================
===  To be removed from the SCA-Cooks mailing list, please send a message
to Majordomo at Ansteorra.ORG with the message body of "unsubscribe
SCA-Cooks". 
=========================================================================
===

___________________________________________________________________
You don't need to buy Internet access to use free Internet e-mail.
Get completely free e-mail from Juno at http://www.juno.com/getjuno.html
or call Juno at (800) 654-JUNO [654-5866]
============================================================================
Go to http://lists.ansteorra.org/lists.html to perform mailing list tasks.