SC - Pumpkins and such...

[lilinah at earthlink.net]

Rivka wrote:
>If the canned "pumpkin" is mostly squash, than would it be appropriate to
>use it in period recipes calling for squash?  I am still wanting to try
>making pumpkin (in this case it would be called squash or goard soup)  This
>would be a sweet cream soup though instead of savory. It tastes very similar
>to pumpkin pie.  It is very good.

As has already been explained, squash is a New World plant, and 
there's no evidence of it being cooked in Europe even in late period.

You can find edible gourds, which are close to or the same as period 
"pumpins", in Asian food markets, where i often find tender loofa 
gourds, whose flesh is pale green.

>I have been thinking of incorporating
>into the first remove of a four remove feast.

"Remove"? You're cooking a Victorian feast? If you're cooking 
Medieval or Renaissance food, then i think you mean "course" :-)

>The recipe has "pumpkin", cream, honey, onions, true cinnamon, cloves,
>gelengal and/or ginger, cubeb, salt and long pepper.

Sounds very tasty - both sweet AND savory. The only sweet ingredient 
is honey, and you don't need to add much. Every other ingredient, 
except the cream and "pumpkin", is savory.

I don't consider cinnamon, cloves, and ginger to be sweet, even 
though modern Americans are used to them in dessert foods. In fact, 
ginger can be quite "hot" (just try some Prince Neville's Ginger Beer 
- - zowee!). Cinnamon is commonly used in modern ethnic Middle Eastern 
savory meat dishes which are not at all sweet. Ginger is used in many 
savory meat and vegetable dishes in China, Japan, Indonesia, 
Thailand, etc. Cloves are rarely used in their native Indonesia, 
although they are occasionally used in savory meat dishes and steamed 
slightly sweet snack cakes.

Galangal is common in Thai and Indonesian cooking and never used in 
anything sweet.

Cubebs and long pepper, being in the piper family along with black 
pepper, are not what i'd consider sweet, although i put pepper in my 
masala chai (nowadays just called chai, but that just means "tea") 
and would NEVER put vanilla in it, although this is typical of 
packaged pre-sweetened so-called chai these days.

>Would this be appropriate?

  If you want to make historically accurate food, then squash is 
inappropriate. Try a more "period" "pumpkin", which won't be orange 
or yellow, if your recipe is pre-1601.

Anahita al-shazhiyya