SC - Re: PLATINA Date Pie Long

[Nanna Rögnvaldardóttir]

Akim wrote:

>What are marked as "currants" like
>"Zante" currants by Sun Maid are not currants at all.

Depends on how you look at it. In my opinion, it is blackcurrants,
redcurrants etc., which are not currants at all, especially as English is as
far as I can recall the only language that uses the term for berries of the
Ribes genus. The small dried raisins are the original currants.

"... but when various fruit bushes of the genus Ribes were introduced into
Britain from northern Europe in the late sixteenth century, the popular
misconception arose that the familiar dried currants were made from their
fruits, and so the name was transferred, and today we have blackcurrants,
redcurrants, etc. ... One of the first references to them in English is made
in Niewe Herball or Historie of Plantes (1578) translated by Henry Lyte who,
realizing that they are members of the gooseberry family, calls them
"beyond-seas gooseberries". But he could not forbear to mention that the
name "currant" was already catching on - "bastard currants", was his term.
At first purists, linguistic and horticultural, tried to discourage the
usage - John Gerard disapproved of it, and John Parkinson wrote, in A Garden
of Flowers (1629): "Those berries ... usually called red currans are not
those currans ... that are sold at the Grocers" - but by the late
seventeenth century it had become firmly established." (John Ayto, A
Gourmet´s Guide)

>To clear up the confusion
>in nomenclature, 17th and 18th century cookbooks called currants
>....currants and Corinth "currants"...."raisins of the sun".


Karen Hess, in Martha Washington´s Booke of Cookery, defines currans as "the
dried fruit of a dwarf grape from the Levant (i.e. Corinth raisins or
currants) and raysons of the sun as sun-dried grapes (i.e. raisins). There
shouldn´t be any confusion except in English language post-16th century
recipes, since other languages use other names for berries of the Ribes
genus (although there may be other stumbling blocks; some Southern European
languages call these berries gooseberries (beyond-seas gooseberries or
whatever).

Nanna