Ginger (was: SC - Will's- Recipe 1)

[Cindy Renfrow]

<snip>>
>This is something I have wondered about a long time.  Minced ginger sounds
>like fresh ginger root; I have found that if I try to mince ginger that has
>dried out, it just falls apart to powdered ginger.  But where would a
>15th-century Englishman get fresh ginger root? I am pretty sure it wasn't
>being grown locally. I have wondered if candied ginger might have been
>available-- that will keep a long time and retains its structure.  Does
>anyone know of any references to candied ginger being available in the
>14th-15th century or before?
>
>Elizabeth/Betty Cook
>

Hello! Gerard (1633 edition) says "Ginger is most impatient of the
coldnesse of these our Northerne Regions, as my selfe haue found by proofe,
for that there haue beene brought vnto me at seuerall times sundry plants
thereof, fresh, greene, and full of juyce, as well from the West Indies, as
from Barbary and other places; which haue sprouted and budded forth greene
leaues in my garden in the heate of Sommer, but as soone as it hath been
but touched with the first sharp blast of Winter, it hath presently
perished both blade and root...
Ginger groweth in Spaine, Barbary, in the Canary Islands, and the Azores..."

Nevertheless, there are recipes in the Harleian MSS., for example, which
call for parings of ginger.  The recipe for Peris in compost, Harl. MS.
4016, #97, says "...And then pare clene rasinges of ginger, & temper hem
ij. or iij. daies, in wyne, And after, ley hem in clarefied hony colde, all
a day or a night; And [th]en take the rasons [parings] oute of the hony,
And caste hem to the peres in composte..."

I'm wondering if there was a climatic change between the time the Harleian
MS. was written (c. 1450), and the time Gerard wrote his book, which would
have allowed ginger to be cultivated in England in the 15th c.?



Cindy/Sincgiefu






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