SC - Re: Greetings (Really! Greetings!)

[Cobb, Toby]

Balthazar, you have a misconception here.  We do not dismiss New World
products out of hand.  We do try to define where they were used, when they
were used, and how they were used.  These products appear only in the last
century of a period covering over a thousand years.  Are they appropriate,
to a feast alledging to be "period" and presumably cooked from 14th Century
sources -- no.  But they might be appropriate to a late 16th Century
Southern German feast.

Larousse to the contrary, white potatoes were not in common use until the
late 17th or early 18th century and in some places had to be introduced by
armed intervention.  Prior to this, they were primarily seen as ornamentals.
There is evidence that they were used a supplemental food supply in Seville.
And there is some questionable evidence I've been trying to track down that
they may have been adopted in parts of Europe as a "protected" food supply
in the Thirty Years War.  There are some late 16th Century recipes for
potatoes from southern Germany.  England probably saw its first white potato
in 1586, when Drake returned from the sack of Cartagena.  Gerard's Virginia
potatoes are probably left in Virginia by Drake, or, more likely, were
introduced to North America during the following colonization attempt. 

Chocolate was used in Spain in the late 16th Century, but the use elsewhere
in Europe does not appear until the 17th Century.

Tomatoes appear to have been introduced to Spain around 1519.  They are
described in an Italian work in 1534.  They apparently were eaten in both of
these countries according to Gerard's description of their preparation.  In
England, they were used as an ornamental.

Sweet potatoes also came from the New World, but appear to have been quickly
adopted in much of Western Europe.

If you want to see what has been said about these products and the evidence
which has been presented, these discussion are in the Florilegium.

BTW, the orange sauce from Martino's roasted chicken does very nicely on
roasted turkey, which was sold in poultry shops in Northern Italy in the
late 16th Century.  It was an experimental substitution.

Bear


> It seems to me to be a little presumptuous to dismiss, out of 
> hand, New World 
> products simply because they do not appear on medieval ships 
> manifests, or in 
> the relatively few cookery books which have survived the 
> ages.  But, then 
> again, how can we be certain that these items "were" eaten?  
> It's a puzzle I 
> do not have the answer to, sadly, and which will keep SCA 
> cooks at each 
> others throats for years, I would imagine.
> 
> Respectfully submitted,
> Balthazar of Blackmoor.