[Sca-cooks] Re: Potatoes Revisited

[Stefan li Rous]

Alys Katharine said:
> Stefan wrote regarding the potato recipes:
> >But are these for white potatos or sweet potatos. I think these
> actually
> >might be better using sweet potatos. I think it might be a mistake
> to
> >quickly assume that 'potato' in this recipe means a white potato.
>
> I didn't assume they _were_ white potatoes.  I'm assuming that they
> are what we know as sweet potatoes, both of which are called
> potatoes.  IIRC, in the previous discussion folk were bandying about
> both white and sweet.  Using one word to refer to two different (but
> similar) items reminds me of that old joke.  "Watch out for that
> dog!"  "What dog?"  (Crash, smash, bang.)  "The Greyhound."

Alys, that was not really directed at you but at the list in general.
We just recently had a discussion here on whether potatos were
period. Someone mentioned some period potato recipes. I didn't
want to see these recipes suddenly used to try to prove white
potatos were eaten in period.

However, reading it myself, I couldn't really point to any evidence
in the recipes themselves that said whether these were white or
sweet potatos, other than I think sweet potatos would be much better
in these recipes than white potatos. Even today, I think we do see
sweet potatos topped with brown sugar, right? But not white potatos.

So while I don't have good evidence that these weren't white potatos,
I thought maybe someone else would. And in either case, maybe folks
might think about it before quickly declaring that here was evidence
for eating white potatos in period.

--
THLord  Stefan li Rous    Barony of Bryn Gwlad    Kingdom of Ansteorra
Mark S. Harris             Austin, Texas         stefan at texas.net
**** See Stefan's Florilegium files at:  http://www.florilegium.org ****