SC - Re: Period cooking?

[david friedman]

This is what the Oxford Companion to Food says about
peanuts or groundnuts:

Groundnuts, often called peanuts (and, in the past,
monkey nuts), are not, in the eyes of botanists, true
nuts.  The plants which produce them, notably Arachis
hypogaea, are legumes like peas or beans, but have
developed the habit of thrusting their flower stems
into the ground after flowering and pollination, so
that the fruit pods develop underground.

The groundnut, which thrives in both tropical and
subtropical climates, was first grown in pre-Inca
times in ancient Peru, and ranks among the half-dozen
most important New World foods which were made
available to the Old World as a result of Columbus'
voyages at the end of the 15th century.  Its
importance was quickly perceived, and from S. America
it spread rapidly around the world, being taken to
both W. and E. Africa by the Portuguese, to the
Philippines and E. Asia across the Pacific from
Mexico, and to N. America from Africa.

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There is a lot more about the modern uses of peanuts,
but this is the information that is pertinent to this
discussion.

Huette

=====
Blessed are they who can laugh at themselves for they 
shall never cease to be amused.

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