[Sca-cooks] Sweet onions in period Europe

[Robin Carroll-Mann]

------Original Message------
From: Stefan li Rous <stefan at texas.net>

I think we've discussed a number of period recipes involving
onions here and I thought there were some comments in these
recipes indicating that onions may likely have been more acrid/
sulfurous? such as comments to parboil them, and I thought, others.

Is there any evidence of onions being eat raw in salads for instance?

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Granado, Herrera, and Platina refer to white onions as being sweeter than
the red ones, and Platina says that the Tuscan variety is milder than the
others, but whether they were as sweet as a modern Vidalia, I have no idea.

Luis Lobera de Avila, in his health manual, says that onions eaten raw are
unhealthy.  He ends the chapter on onions, leeks, and garlic by saying that
these foods are better suited to crude and rustic people than to gentry, so
if you want more information, go look it up in the classical Latin sources.

Lady Brighid ni Chiarain
mka Robin Carroll-Mann
Barony of Settmour Swamp, East
rcmann4 at earthlink.net