SC - Pumpkins and such...
LadyEbonSwan at aol.com
LadyEbonSwan at aol.com
Wed Oct 18 22:30:15 PDT 2000
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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