SC - Citron and Potato

[Robin Carroll-Mann]

And it came to pass on 4 May 99,, that Stefan li Rous wrote:

> Lady Brighid ni Chiarain posted a recipe:
> > 
> > Source: "Libro del Arte de Cozina" (Spanish, 1599); translation mine
> > 
> > CIDRA Y PATATA -- Citron and Potato
> 
> How sure are you that the potato that is meant is the white potato?

I am not certain at all, but I felt that period recipes for any kind of potato 
were rare enough to be of interest.  One possible clue is that the 
mixture is to be cooked until the stuff at the bottom of the boiler turns 
white.  If you were starting with white potato and citron and sugar, then I 
assume the mixture would become more opaque, and look whiter.  If 
you started with sweet potato in the mixture, could it change enough to 
be called white?  I'm out of my field here -- I have never dabbled in 
conserves or confectionary.  Maybe Mistress Alys Katherine would like 
to add her two pence?

> Particularly with the sweetener and the Citron this sounds more like
> something for a sweet potato.

To our modern taste, yes, but there are many medieval recipes which 
add sweetening to things we would find unusual.  There's a recipe for 
sweetened cooked lettuce not far from the one I translated, and...
Hmmm... I was just flipping pages here.  Found another recipe, this one 
for "Carne de Limon, y Batatas" -- flesh of lemon and sweet potatos.  In 
modern Spanish at least, "patata" is the term for the white potato.  
"Batata" or "patata dulce" is the sweet potato.  So unless you want to 
argue scribal error (which is *always* possible), it looks to me as 
though we have two potato recipes, one of each kind.  (Yes, Ras, I'll 
post the other, but right now I have to go to work.)

I wish I'd noticed this before, but this source is not the one I'm primarily 
working with, and it's over 400 pages, and as a diabetic, I don't pay 
much attention to confectionary recipes.

> Lord Stefan li Rous    Barony of Bryn Gwlad    Kingdom of Ansteorra
> Mark S. Harris             Austin, Texas           stefan at texas.net

Brighid


Lady Brighid ni Chiarain
Settmour Swamp, East (NJ)
mka Robin Carroll-Mann
harper at idt.net
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