SC - Pumpkins in Period?

[Susan Browning]

At 8:02 PM -0700 9/19/00, I wrote:

>The word "pompon," according to the OED, has nothing to do with 
>pumpkins or gourds.

But glancing through Thomas Dawson (1597), I find him using "pompon" 
for some kind of vegetable (an alternative to melon or cucumber), so 
it looks as though Lady Eileen is probably right that one of its 
meanings  is an alternate form of "pumpkin."

The recipe, incidentally, does not give me confidence in Dawson. He 
is soaking seeds in sugar water mixed with rose water, then drying 
the seeds and planting them, in order to produce such melons, the 
like of which have never been seen. And if you mix musk into the 
sugar water ...  .

- -- 
David/Cariadoc
http://www.daviddfriedman.com/