SC - Unhistoric things we serve WAS:Shepherds Pie

[grizly at mindspring.com]

sca-cooks at ansteorra.org wrote:
> In a message dated 5/9/00 9:52:53 AM Pacific Daylight Time, 
    The "Eurocentric prejudice" regarding food is an attitude I will never, ever understand.  The Chinese were eating tomatoes before the Europeans were.  So were the arabs.  Peanuts were being grown and eaten in Siam and India for thousands of years.  Bananas were being eaten in Southeast Asia for thousands of years as well.  Hot peppers have been an elemenf of Indian cooking (as well as Mongolian, Afghan, and Siamese) for centuries.  Sure sounds like they were period... oh, not European, of course, but period.  
    But if we are talking about Europe, lets consider:  The tomato entered Italian cuisine in the 1500's... which is during period.  Potatoes were being grown as a food crop in Spain and France in the 1500's as well.  Period again. 
    The problem seems to me that we (the generic "we") forget that period is more than the Renaissance and the Dark Ages, but the Age of Exploration as well.

    Sayyid Suleyman al-Rashid ibn Beyazid  >>>>>>>>>>>

Good lady,

I for one appreciate your frustration at the lack of hard information being propogated.  Having just now finished checking back through three sources:  The Origianl Mediterranean Cuisine by Barbara Santich,  The Neapolitan Recipe collection by Scully, and On Right Pleasure and Good Health by Platina and translated by Markham, I ask for any information and reference you can offer me for my files.  I cannot find any reference in these books for potatoes or tomatoes.  Scully's text as well as Platina's had foundations in Maestro Martino's work, which is very strong in the cultures around the mediterranean basin, in my limited readings.  Many cultures pervaded Naples and Southern Italy in 16th century.  I had presumed that an item of ubiquity in cuisine would have been mentioned in one of these texts somewhere.
I will gladly yield to more accurate information as I quest for accurate knowledge anywhere it can be found.  I have also begun searching my copy of _Mediterranean trade in Medieval Europe to find if these items appear in cargo manifests entering Naples, Venice or other major ports.  There are some facinating tidbits I have gleaned form there, including the exostance of pomegranate wine as imported from Persoa in late 15th century.  Pliny the elder mentioned it centuries before, and it is certainly a prodict found in the heart of the Mediterranean basin at that time.

I would like to add your information to my biliography and files on propagation of new world foods in Italian and other Mediterranean cuisines.  As soon as practical, please give us your information and reference naterials.  This sort of hard evidence would prove rather exciting if not revolutionary.  

Please participate and add your knowledge to ours in order to further your ends of expanding knowledge of other cultures.  We are pssionate about what we knwo and are learning.  To chide and make unflattering characterizations of our preferred areas of specialty (often due to lack of research materials) is to dismiss us and our talents out of hand before meanigful discourse can be attempted.  Please share your passion for those cultures with us in a productive, inviting way that we may all gain from the exchange.

pacem et bonum,

niccolo difrancesco