SC - Re: Currants vs Zante raisins (Long reply)

[RANDALL DIAMOND]

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

Hauviette replied:
>Thank you for the fill in Akim. Do you mind if I include
>this information in the menu and feast document I am
preparing? I'll be doing a feast at war for TRM's Dag and
>Elayna, from Platina. I would love to spread the info you
>give me here to those who will get the write up. It is
>invaluable to understand the etymology of the use of
the word in period vs modern interpretation.

Oh, please feel free to use it if you like.  I can't guarantee
that my data is absolutly, infallably correct.  Therefore, I
suggest you decide what to use only after mulling the
following arguments:

Nanna commented:
>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.

I disagree.  From my point of view, currans or currants are
specifically the English name of berries of the Ribes species,
red, white and black.  This name was derived (in English)
when Ribes plants were introduced into England or perhaps
a little earlier (say mid 15th) as the English became familiar
with Ribes berries on the continent.   The separate terms
"raysons of the sun" or "Zant raisins" probably preceded
the term "curran" in the English language.

>"... 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.

In terms of accurate botany, Lyte is best largely ignored
as a source.  Lyte didn't "realize" anything.  He was mostly
an amateur gardner who wrote nothing original, merely
translating the older Cruydeboeck, then well known all over
continiental Europe, from the L'Ecluse French translation into
English, borrowing heavily from William Turner.  He is
considered important in the history of English gardening
mainly because he incorporated a diary-like commentary of
just where he saw these plants growing in England in detail.
This was an invaluable record but scarcely academic. His
comments on "beyond seas gooseberries" are relatively
unimportant.

>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)

Yes, Gerard did disapprove of it but he also was
convinced there was a tree from which live geese
were hatched from barnacles too! One of the problems
was that Ribes was fairly late being described in
continental herbals as they are cool weather plants
in areas where agriculture was late in flourishing.  The
plants were not depicted until 1484 in a German publication
- - Mainz Herbarius, but by the next century Jean Ruel, a
French author was praising them highly both as an
ornamental and for their fruit.  Gerard grossly described
the small plants he saw (and possibly grew) as a "spineless
kind of gooseberry". Thomas Johnson in the 1633 revision
of Gerard's Herbal included a fairly accurate description of
currants (Ribes) correcting the rather sloppy treatment by
Gerard in 1597.  He repeated essentially the same
statement you quoted from Ayto in it, but this statement
does not mean that "currans" was adapted from another
name for Zant raisins.   As you have said, the other languages
had separate names.  "Currans" seems to be totally an English
usage. It is more consistant that the popular belief was that
Zant raisins were dried currants (Ribes), not that currants
(Ribes) were the fresh version of what had been for some time
marketed dried from Zante. After all, Ribes were very common
in the wild on the continient and were being cultivated early in
the 16th century.

>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).

I think Karen Hess is wrong or confused. "Raysons of the sun"
was a term for dried Corinth grapes or popularly "currants" in
English.   The term for dried grapes was and is unabiguious
and another term was not necessary or useful.  If some distant
Europeans called these plants gooseberries, what of it?  The
English (and the gooseberry is mostly admired in England,
not the continent) had absolutely no problem in proper
identification of a gooseberry.  And further, the English did not
consider currants (Ribes) to be gooseberries at all.  Currant
plants were included in the 1629 supplies of the Massachusetts
Bay Colony.  They certainly were not confused about "currants"
They were immensely popular by that time and spread throughout
the English colonies in America very quickly.

Hauviette asks:
>Just to clarify; the "dried currants" available in bulk
>food stores etc, really aren't currants, they are as
>you and Ras have pointed out, Zante raisins?

I still am not quite happy with the nomenclature still being used.
Ras and others are still mixing terms.   To summerize my own view:
1. Sunkist type currants .....are raisins of Corinth grapes grown
     on the island of Zante.
2.  Raisins ....are sun dried grapes.....always.
3   "Raysons of the sun" .....are a  popular 17th and 18th century
      term for raisins of Corinth grapes from Corinth or Zante to help
      distinuguish them from currants (Ribes).  The term probably
      was used in the 16th century as well but not so extensively.
4.  Currants ....are always Ribes berries, used fresh, in jelly,
      jams and wines.  Only a reference to DRIED fruit does the
      term (in English)  mean Zante grape raisins.  In DRIED fruit,
      it NEVER means Ribes berries.
5.   There may be specific recipes which get this confused and
      switched in meaning but this does not mean the instance
      was reflective of a universal usage at that time.  It means
      more likely that someone was confused over the origin or
      identity or both of the small dried fruit he was using.

I may be proven wrong on my views with further documentation,
but what I have at hand leads me to my currant (pun intended)
position on this berry important issue.

Akim Yaroslavich
"No glory comes without pain"