SC - SC-Mongolian hot pot?

[Richard Keith]

Akim wrote:

>Seriously,  Culpepper is not a good source
>for any kind of serious study of botanical taxonomy.  The
>editor of the NATIONAL ENQUIRER couldn't write a
>more wacky, mumbo-jumbo herbal.

The vast majority of the information, however is quite
in line with the information available at the time. Culpepper
was a noted plagerist (by our standards) of the first
order. The part of his writings that most people object
to are the astrological comments. That may well be
the source of your "wacky, mumbo-jumbo" opinion.

But in terms of botanical taxonomy, for the
recreationist cook or otherwise, his work serves as
a very adequate bridge between time periods. The
accuracy or validity of his information isn't what is
at issue. The information he presents *does* give
someone a perfectly acceptable view of what they
called things during his time. Culpepper is much
maligned, and I think it's not justified.

For those of you interested in looking at Culpepper,
you can find two versions of it webbed. The first
is from Bibliomania and is the inferior of the two
(in that it isn't as nicely webbed):

http://www.bibliomania.com/NonFiction/Culpeper/Herbal/

The second is from the Yale Medical Library:

http://www.bibliomania.com/NonFiction/Culpeper/Herbal/

Many cooks on the list might find these links useful.

>Actually, the plant list I have does go through Gerard completely
>(and Turner and a several othe herbals) though I only had the
>abridged version.

Would it be too much trouble to have you list which herbals
you did the compilation from? Offline is fine with me,
though I suspect cook-herbalists from this list would
be curious.

>Email me privately about what I need to get to you to
>translate from Macinese.

Will do. Here's to hoping it works out for everyone.
Cheers,

Jasmine
Iasmin de Cordoba, gwalli at infoengine.com