SC - beets

[Michael P Newton]

According to _Medieval English Gardens_ byn Teresa McLean (one of my
current library books, you all need to check this one out - its got lots
of stuff on who grew what for what reason. it is however a very bad spoon
tease! ANYWAYS) In the chapter on the vegatable patch, McLean states that
most vegatables were grown for the 'porray' pot and mostly the leaves
were used. In fact, she states that root vegetables weren't grown unless
its leaves were useful in the pot as well. The one root she claims was
popular was the radish - all of the others were just to bland!
Lady Beatrix
(wondering now just how period borsht really is?)
On Mon, 1 Dec 1997 21:09:42 -0500 dangilsp at intrepid.net (Dan Gillespie)
writes:
>Elizabeth wrote:  "(Did people eat beetroot?).
>
>As far as I can tell, no.  Every time I find a reference to beets, it 
>seems
>to mean greens.  Maybe beetroot got developed into something big 
>enough to
>be useful after our period?"
>
>There is a mention of both white & red, or Roman beets, clearly as a 
>root
>vegetable in the 1633 edition of Gerard's Herbal; he says they're 
>boiled &
>eaten with oil, vinegar & pepper.  I haven't had a chance to look at 
>the
>earlier 1598 edition to see if this entry was included there as well.  
>His
>description makes it sound like eating beet roots was not yet a 
>strongly
>established practice at the time the information was published.  They 
>are
>likely very late period at best.
>                                Hope this helps,
>                                        Antoine de Bayonne
>Dan Gillespie
>dangilsp at intrepid.net
>Dan_Gillespie at usgs.gov
>Martinsburg, West Virginia, USA 
>
============================================================================

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".

============================================================================