SC - noon-member submission - Cucumbers
Michael Gunter
countgunthar at hotmail.com
Wed Apr 4 12:02:43 PDT 2001
ep running up against the notion, among SCAdians, that cucumbers
are not per
iod. This
is quite definitely a SCAdian Urban Myth, because I've never seen it
in a print
source.
So, where is it coming from? If we can figure out where 'pink isn't
period' came
from, we
should be able to trace this myth too.
I think it comes from the idea that medieval food is wierd, and no
vegetable we commonly eat today was eaten in the middle ages.
Of course cucumbers are period. I don't know whether the ones you find
the grocery store are period varieties(I somehow doubt it), but you can
get some periodoid (at least) varieties in places like Indian grocery
stores.
Platina lists three types of cucumbers and a variety of ways to eat
them, so there are extent recipes from Italy 15th C. Elizabethan
cookbooks also give recipes for preserving cowcumbers which sound
remarkably like recipes for dill pickles. The OED refers cowcumber ->
cucumber, and under cucmber says "A creeping plant, Cucumis sativis
(family) Cucurbitaceae), a native of southern Asia, from ancient times
cultivated for its fruit. Sited in 1400 Of erbis he schal ete femel,
melones, cucumeris. Wyclif makes reference to the plant in 1382, Where
cucumeris, that ben bitter berbis, waxen.
toodles, margaret
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