SC - authenticity

[Stefan li Rous]

The Elizabethans preferred sweet potatoes.  Oviedo reported in 1526 that
sweet potatoes had often been brought back to Spain and that he had brought
some back to be planted in Avila.  England appears to have received them
from Spain during Henry VIII's marriage to Catherine of Aragon.  Henry was
said to like sweet potato pie and there are occasional references to sweet
potato pies which I have not tracked down to contemporary sources.  

Root mentions that Marnette's The Perfect Cook (1656) gives a recipe for
potato pie with the ingredients of cinnamon, nutmeg, mace, grapes and dates.


Gerard gives the following, "...whose nutriment is as it were a mean between
flesh and fruit, but somewhat windie; yet being roasted in the embers they
lose much of their windinesse....Some when they be so rosted infuse and sop
them in wine; and others to give them the greater grace in eating, do boile
them with prunes and so eat them; likewise others dresse them (being first
rosted) with oile, vinegar, and salt, every man according to his own taste
and liking."

In 1586, Francis Drake sacked Cartegena and reprovisioned his ships.  There
is a belief that he obtained the first white potatoes to enter England at
this time and that white potatoes may have been served at a banquet at the
English court.  If so, they didn't catch on.  How they would have been
served is open to question, but it would probably have been treated similar
to Gerard's sweet potato.

Gerard refers to the white potato as Potatoes of Virginia.  Drake on his
return voyage in 1586 rescued the survivors of the first Roanoke colony and
returned them to England.  It is an open question as to whether Gerard
believed Drake found the potato in Virginia or whether potatoes were sent to
Virginia with the second Roanoke colony in 1587 and Gerard received a sample
from the colony.

Maize made no impact on the Elizabethans.  Gerard expresses it thusly;
"...the barbarous Indians, which know no better, are constrained to make a
vertue of necessitie, and thinke it is a good food; whereas we may easily
judge, that it nourisheth but little, and is of hard and evill digestion, a
more convenient food for swine than for men."

The fact that the New World colonists made use of maize should not be
generalized to the entire Elizabethan world.  The English colonist preferred
wheat, but smut destroyed their wheat crops.

Bear


> I want any ideas on how to present potatoes or corn
> ect as a New exotic food at an elizabethan feast
> --- 
> 
> =====
> From bjofnz at yahoo.co.nz
> 
>