SC - Help with roast duck

[Robin Carroll-Mann]

At 2:49 AM -0800 2/27/00, lilinah at earthlink.net wrote:
>Well, i've been in the SCA about 9 months and after looking over our 
>Kingdom A&S competitions, i've decided to enter a few (gulp).
>
>At the Kingdom of the West October Crown, the Wooden Spoon 
>competition is for "a dish involving pumpkin". I know we've recently 
>discussed New vs. Old World foods. And, IIRC, pumpkins were New 
>World.


Botanically, yes. Etymologically, I think not. The word seems to come 
from a Greek original, if I correctly interpret the OED, which I 
believe meant "large melon." I think I remember having seen its use 
in a period recipe, presumably referring to a gourd of some sort, but 
I don't remember where and might be wrong--I couldn't find any 
references in the OED to pre-Columbian uses of the English word. So 
one possibility would be to interpret the word as meaning a gourd or 
large melon, and go from there.

>Are there any authentic (obviously late) "period"recipes for pumpkin?

I don't know. Digby doesn't list it in the index, but I haven't 
searched the book. Herbert May would be your best guess, but he's 
second half of the 17th century.

Another possibility, since the dish only has to "involve" pumpkin, is 
to make some period dish, and serve it in a hollowed out pumpkin--on 
the theory that if a medieval person happened to come across a 
pumpkin, that would be an obvious thing to do with it.

It sounds as though the West is trying to compete with Trimaris for 
"kingdom most hostile to period cooking." Can you imagine a 
kingdomwide contest for "best polyester garb?"

David/Cariadoc
http://www.best.com/~ddfr/