[Sca-cooks] Period food myths

[Siegfried Heydrich]

    Y'know, I have to wonder if there are any legacy/heritage vegetable
clubs out there, in various ag stations and universities around the world. I
know there are all sorts of rare and exotic fruit clubs in my area, and I'd
think there would be enough academic interest for legacy seed stock to be
available somewhere. Be interesting to grow a patch of red carrots for a
feast.
    If you want to see some REALLY interestingly colored veggies, though,
have a look at Peruvian crops sometime! There was a south american festival
in Miami, and their farmers market looked like something out of star wars .
. . some very odd looking flora, indeed.

    Sieggy

----- Original Message -----

> 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