[Sca-cooks] Re: Noce d'India

[E. Rain]

Greetings from Eden

Thomas [Gloning] posts some excellent reasons for believing that noce
d'India may be coconut, and that the translators of "the four seasons of the
house of cerruti" were incorrect in translating it as nutmeg.

Looking at the cerruti illustration I could go either way.  On the table in
the foreground you see a small reddish fruit on stems, rather like the fruit
of a nutmeg, but on the tree itself are large greengray round blobs with
dark spots that could be interpreted as coconuts.

for those who don't have it, the full translation of the text reads:
Nutmeg 	Nux Indie
The tree is very similar to the peach tree and it's fruit to the walnut for
it has a thick, green cortex, inside which is the nutmeg enclosed in a hard,
thin shell.  The fresh sweet ones, says ellbochasim of Baghdad, are
preferable; they help the intellect and thin the blood considerably.  The
other authors agree that nutmeg sweetens the breath, is good for freckles,
and fortifies the eyesight, the mouth of the stomach, the liver, and spleen.
The liqueur that is made from crushed heated, and pressed nutmegs gives off
a delightful scent and is useful for coldness in the nerves, loosening the
joints, and vigorously inflaming the male.


the hard thin shell could well be the mace if it is indeed nutmeg.


for comparison, here are snippets from Alan Davidson's descriptions from
"The Oxford companion to food:

Coconut:  The 'nut' is technically a drupe, i.e. a fruit with a hard stone.
A whole coconut, as usually sold, is only the stone of the fruit, the husk
having been removed before shipping...   the outside husk or exocarp is
smooth and very tough, green to reddish brown, becoming grey as the fruit
matures.

Nutmeg:  the fruit, which encloses the mace and nutmeg is itself edible...
By the 12th century it and Mace were well known in Europe.

and from cheftalk.com:
The nutmeg fruit is a pendulous drupe, similar in appearance to an apricot.
When fully mature, it splits in two parts, exposing a crimson-coloured aril
(which is the mace), this surrounds a single shiny, brown seed, (which is
the nutmeg).


Thomas, where did you get the reference to using "a ground powder from the
kernel of coconut"?

I'm fascinated to learn that Coconut may possibly have been *eaten* at this
time.  I've known they'd made artifacts from the shells, but not that they
knew it was a comestible.

Eden
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Eden Rain
raghead at liripipe.com