sca-cooks Transport of Foodstuffs

[Philip W. Troy]

Jeffrey Miller wrote:

> One thing I do disagree on is corn - recent research has turned up
> references to it in 13 and 14th century Chinese and Indian texts about
> the medicinal and nutritional values of different plants and animals -
> that's certainly not enough to include corn tortillas at a Saxon feast,
> but it was around in some places besides the Americas.

The references to which you refer (I've seen them) often come with an
illustration. What they show is a vaguely elongated ear of grain, which,
in medieval European parlance, would have been called "corn" or some
other language's equivalent. It could just as easily be sorghum,
allowing for artistic license. There is no really incontrivertible
evidence for the existence of maize outside the New World in period.

Adamantius, who has no problem with any of the rest of this.