SC - nightshades

[LrdRas at aol.com]

In a message dated 2/14/98 1:07:20 PM Eastern Standard Time,
sbloch at adl15.adelphi.edu writes:

<< Yes, tomatoes and potatoes are both Solanaceae, but so are eggplants,
 which were widely used at least in Iberian cooking in the Middle Ages. >>

True, however, people had several hundreds of years to get to know what part
of the eggplant to eat. When tomatoes (yellow and white) were introduced and
potatoes of multi colors , they were not "time tested". It was not until many
years later that they came into genneral use as a food item. In fact, tomatoes
were often looked upon with suspicion until the early part of this century
when they were still said to cause cancer and other nasties. The greenery is
definately very poisonous and I would think that a few cases of poisoning
among the gardeners of the elite who are the only ones that grew them at the
beginning would have quickly put a damper on any further experiments for quite
a while.

Ras
============================================================================

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".

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