SC - Pumpkins (was: Needing help with a class....)

[LrdRas at aol.com]

In a message dated 5/28/98 3:42:10 PM Eastern Daylight Time, ddfr at best.com
writes:

<< I have seen 14th-c. Italian pictures of watermelons and what was translated
 "pumpkins", but are actually white-flowered gourds, long and green. This
 was in a manuscript of the Taciunum Sanitatas that was published a while
 back as _The Four Seasons of the House of Cerruti_.
 
 Elizabeth/Betty Cook >>

Pumpkin is a word that was transferred to New World plants because they looked
similar in leave style and growth habit to the white flowered gourds. Fruit
shape was not a consideration when the term was applied to New World plants.
Thus our pumpkins are called that because of the plant not the fruit. :-)

BTW, there is a recipe in al-Baghdadi that tells you how to make fresh dates
from dried ones by carving a whiole in the top of a watermelon large enough to
insert the hand. You then mash and remove the pulp and seeds leaving the
liquid inside. Dump in your dates; replace the carved out section and leave a
day. Voila! Fresh dates. From personal experience this works for figs as well.
:-)

Ras
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