SC - Gourds

[Philip & Susan Troy]

LrdRas at aol.com wrote:

> << hairy/fuzzy melon, a.k.a.
>  white-flowered gourd, a.k.a. long squash, which is apparently the
>  medieval European cucurbit gourd.
> 
>  Adamantius >>
> 
> In this we must disagree. Medieval illuminations which show pictures of
> 'guords' most often illustrate them as long and skinny or bottle shaped or
> cucumber shaped. The Italian ediblre gourd, the luffa gourd and the bottle
> (or bird's house) gourd are all edible when young . These are the most likely
> candidates.
> 
> On what evidence do your base your belief that fuzzy gourds from the Occident
> would have been  used?

Same evidence as you, probably. Do you mean Orient, by any chance?
White-flowered gourds, fuzzy or hairy melons, are more or less
indigenous to the Eurasian landmass, and appear, and did appear, in the
cuisines of the Far East, India, Persia, etc. The illustrations (we're
probably talking about the same ones) show pale green oblong fruits,
somewhat fatter at the flower end than at the stem, sometimes slightly
curved. Also small white blossoms. Up close, the melons have a slight
down on them, more akin to the fuzzy stuff you can rub off the skin of a
quince than to peachfuzz, hence the appellation, fuzzy.

> Cariadoc also mentions fuzzy. I suspect that the
> relative ease of finding that type in US markets is the major criteria for
> your suggestion. Please correct me if I am wrong and provide greater details
> supporting your position.

Consider yourself offically corrected: if that were the case, I would
suggest the period European gourd was in fact frozen peas ;  )  My
position is based on the fact that the melon/gourd could easily, from a
scientific standpoint, have been grown in period Europe, and looks quite
 a lot like the illustrations in several different versions of Tacuinum
Sanitatis. While this doesn't prove that they _were_ the period European
gourd, it allows for a possibility equally viable to that of the various
Italian gourds, which are possibly of the same species anyway. I should
point out, though, that bottleneck gourds (which a man down the street
from me grows) really don't look too much like the period illustrations
I've seen. There may have been a bit of intervarietal hybridization to
enhance that bottle shape in the intervening years.

Some confusion may be caused by the fact that Tacuinum Sanitatis
occasionally depicts items with which the illustrator was not personally
familiar, so we can't always rely 100% on the illustrations (the bananas
are cute, though). The similarities between the gourds as illustrated
and fuzzy melons are pretty uncanny, however.    

But yes, it's true that fuzzy melons may be more available in the
commercial ethnic markets than Italian gourds, which is probably why I
often see people looking as if they might be Italian buying fuzzy melons
in the Indian and Chinese markets near me. Of course they could be
sauteeing them with beef in oyster sauce...   ;  ) . One never knows, do one?

Adamantius
- -- 
Phil & Susan Troy

troy at asan.com
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