[Sca-cooks] Period food myths

[Decker, Terry D.]

Unfortunately, reality is quite a bit more complex than that.  There are six
colors of carrot known to precede the orange, white, yellow, purple, red,
green and black,

White carrots are the original carrot of Europe.  Purple (or possibly black)
carrots are from Asia.  Yellow carrots are a hybrid, possibly natural, which
are first noted in Asia Minor (Byzantine Turkey) in the 10th Century.  There
is some speculation that white, yellow and purple carrots have been eaten in
Asia Minor since prehistory.

The Asiatic carrots are introduced into Europe through Spain.  A manuscript
by a 12th Century Moor describes two types of carrots, red (which may have
been purple) and a green shading into yellow.  The red was the better
eating, according to the correspondent.  The first European reference to
carrots as other than white is in the late 11th Century.

The orange carrot is a hybrid obtained by crossing yellow and red carrots.
Most of this hybridization was done by the Dutch and the Flemish.  Orange
carrots appear in at least one late 16th Century Dutch painting (placing the
orange carrot arguably within period), but a formal written description of
the orange varietals does not appear until the 17th Century.  The Dutch
hybrids are where most of our modern carrots come from, as the Dutch were
hybridizing for better taste and texture.

Interestingly, you may find purple carrots at the grocery.  If you do, the
are probably not the purple carrot of Antiquity, but hybrids from a breeding
project by Leonard Pike of Texas A&M.

Bear

> how about the colour of carrots....white for the welsh areas
> of britain and
> purple in the rest.
> Many people still think those orange things are period.
> vara