SC - Pumpkins and such...

[Christine A Seelye-King]

Welcome, and with 2 cents like those, you can pitch in anytime!
Mistress Christianna MacGrain, OP, OL, Meridies

On Thu, 19 Oct 2000 01:30:15 EDT LadyEbonSwan at aol.com writes:
> In a message dated 10/18/00 5:07:16 PM Eastern Daylight Time, 
> TerryD at Health.State.OK.US writes:
> 
> << Pumpkins and squash come into use in Europe during the 16th 
> Century and 
> they
>  appear in very late SCA period paintings.  The paintings I've seen 
> suggest
>  they were eaten, but they don't seem to make an appearance in the 
> recipes
>  (they may have simply replaced the gourds in cooking).
>  
>  As a piece of guesswork, the giant varietals are modern hybrids, 
> while the
>  smaller pumpkins, like the Small Sugar, would be closer to the 16th 
> Century
>  pumpkin.
>   >>
>     
>     If I might put in my two cents' worth here....
> 
>     I've been lurking for about a week or perhaps more; finally I 
> found a 
> topic I can jump in on, more or less.  But first, a wee 
> introduction....
> 
>     My name is Siobhan MacDermott; I've been playing off and on in 
> the Barony 
> of St.Swithun's Bog, Kingdom of Aethelmearc for almost nine years 
> now...(wow...I hadn't thought till now that it was that long!) I 
> haven't been 
> very active in a while; two babies in as many years kind of nipped 
> that in 
> the bud for a time!  I'm also a living historian (snotty way to say 
> re-enactor) with a Civil War unit, which took up what little time I 
> had left. 
>  With both of these persuits, I've become the cook by default, for 
> love of my 
> playing with period recipes and chasing people down to try them, 
> with mixed 
> results.  Y'know, if you trip 'em, they sit still long enough to 
> shove a 
> pasty or two in their mouths....
> 
>     At any rate, I've worked with a lot of recipes with pumpkin, and 
> in my 
> circles as well, the origins of pumpkins and squash have been 
> bandied about.  
> The results of my research (which I'm praying isn't the notebook I 
> saw my 
> toddler disappear with a few days ago) was that:
> 
>     Pumpkins and most types of "winter" squash (acorn, hubbard, 
> pumpkins and 
> the like) are indeed products of the New World, and therefore would 
> not be 
> appropriate for anything but extreme late period (SCA) dishes.  I 
> did, 
> however find a most tantalizing hint as to just how far back the 
> said 
> squashes were used in European/Colonial cooking in a little book by 
> the title 
> of "New England Rarities", by Josselyn [1671].  An example (quoted 
> from yet 
> another notebook from Lord knows what feast I was  considering 
> throwing 
> together)....
> 
>     Pompion Sause
> 
>     The Housewives manner is to slice them when ripe and cut them 
> into Dice, 
> and so fill a pot with them of two or theree Gallons and stew them 
> upon a 
> gentle fire the whole day.  And as they sink they fill again with 
> fresh 
> Pompions not putting any liquor to them and when it is stir'd enough 
> it will 
> look like bak'd Apples, this Dish putting butter to it and a little 
> Vinegar 
> with some Spice as Ginger which makes it tart like an Apple, and so 
> serve it 
> up to be eaten with fish or flesh.  
> 
>     
>     ...what I found to be really interesting was that his comment 
> about this 
> dish was that this was "that ancient New England standing dish".  I 
> don't 
> expect it to be much more than a few decades older than this 
> publication, but 
> it did give me a stepping stone in my research.  Another interesting 
> note is 
> that while I was living in France while in high school (exchange 
> program and 
> all), I stayed in Provence, near Marseilles.  Stewed pumpkin is a 
> very common 
> side dish there, and apparently has been (at least according to my 
> host 
> mother and her mother, who were Belgian) for longer than they can 
> remember.  
> Huh.  Just try serving that to your kids here..::chuckle::  
> 
>     And another side note...a lot of the solid pack pumpkin in cans 
> and the 
> pie filling found in stores are not only mostly squash of varying 
> varieties 
> (they all taste somewhat alike when similarly prepared), but are 
> also colored 
> with an extract from carrots.  When making pies from scratch, the 
> resulting 
> color is a gray-ish color.  Tastes wonderful, though.  
> 
>     Anyway....there's my two cents!  
> 
>     Siobhan MacDermott
> 
> 
>     
>
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