SC - pasty and Roman

[Christina van Tets]

Hello!

Just to reiterate, I had always understood (from Cornish 
grandparents) that the potato was not what denoted the Cornish pasty. 
It could be made from anything, including jam, and the savoury ones 
almost always, IIRC, included turnips, which I am fairly certain (!) 
are period?  I would guess that the potato made its way in as a 
common ingredient at roughly the same sort of level as all the other 
Cornish austerity measures, like Sky-blue-and-sinkers (skimmed milk 
with just enough bread to soak up the colour and turn the milk pale 
blue - a dish fed to children in very poor areas last century and 
this, apparently).  I do not think that potato, or the kind of meat 
used, is the governing factor at all.

Incidentally, since we seem to be getting onto Roman stuff again, I 
have been reading 'Palladius on husbandrie', a 1420 (humanist?) 
translation of Martial's and others' works on farming.  It includes 
rather a lot of recipes for wine, including changing the flavours, 
and also for preserving olives, figs, and other fruit.  While I 
realise that the original writings are OOP, it is just conceivable 
that a humanist persona may have experimented with these techniques 
after their rediscovery (if they can attempt to take over Rome, 
surely they'd try anything!).  Because of their OOP-ness, and because 
a lot of them refer specifically to vintning (grammar?), I won't post 
the extracts unless you want them.  Incidentally, the translation was 
done into English in 1420, so the EETS has contented itself with 
gist-type translations for each stanza.

Cheers
Cairistiona

*****************************************************
Dr. Ian van Tets
Dept. of Zoology
University of Cape Town
Rondebosch 7701 RSA

ph: +27 +21 650 3641 (w), 650 3301 (fax), 47 5324 (H)
*****************************************************

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