SC - Green Beans

[Sharon L. Harrett]

On Sun, 3 Aug 1997, Terry Nutter wrote:

> Hi, Katerine here.  Ceridwen quotes John Gerard on kidney beans.  Sounds
> interesting!  I haven't tripped over any references to them in 13th to 15th
> Century cuisine, but maybe I'm looking too early.  Can you tell us what his 
> dates are?
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> -- Katerine/Terry
> 
> ============================================================================

	Hi Katerine,

	Geradrd's Herbal was first published in 1597, late for us but still
within the realm of Renaissance cookery , by my standards anyway. I have the
facsimile edition published by Dover, and have spent hours trying to figure
out some of his sources and see if I can get any  time frame as to the
import or common use of the plants he describes. Those from the New World he
usually specifies when and where they came from, but not always. There is an
introductory chapter in which he describes many Herbals preceding this one,
by date and author, but no indication if he quotes from these.
	I won't be so bold as to hold up this book as documentation for
anything before the lifetime of Gerard,whose book was based on the Dodoens
herbal of 1583, and was updated and revised by Thomas Johnson in 1633. I do
not have to hand any horticultural encyclopedia which would tell me
definitively whether the beans he refers to were actually favas, or kidney,
or some other . 	
	I have seen mention in Le Menagier and a couple others of preparing
beans in their "cods", though and deduce from that , that the people of the
Late Middle Ages ate beans fresh from the plant at times, and not always
ripe or dried. Though this does not allow me to assume those beans are the
same as our "green beans", they may have been similar.
	My gardening experience and the seed catalogs I recieve lead me to
believe that even what we know as "heirloom" vegetables, (open-pollinated,
old varieties) cannot be traced back more than 75-100 years. Our modern
varieties have been bred for tenderness, appearance, selective harvest
times, tolerance to adverse weather, resistance to disease and insects, etc.
For a definate answer I suppose we would have to look to archaeology, or
plant historians.
	OOHHH!... Just looked in "medieval English Gardens" In a treatise on
necessities for the country man, he says that one needs a small table on
which to mince or cut up vegetables, including beans in the pod! (12th
c)along with shelled beans, cabbage, leeks, onoins,lentils, peas, and
millet. (Neckham)   Hmmmmmmmm......

Comments, anyone?

Ceridwen


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