[Sca-cooks] Simple and Authentic

[Volker Bach]

XvLoverCrimvX at aol.com schrieb:
>
> In a message dated 9/21/01 2:58:50 AM Eastern Daylight Time, stefan at texas.net
> writes:
>
> > Uh, Misha, do you have any evidence that this would be period Russian
> >  food? Were goats common in Russia? I have no idea. Or is feta cheese
> >  from sheep milk? But even more, I doubt olives will grow there, at
> >  least in what I think were the period boundaries of Russia. Would
> >  they import them? I don't think so. I don't think they show up in
> >  English texts. And shipping them to England would be easier than to
> >  Russia.
> >
> >  Anyone else have any comments yea or nay on this?
>
> My persona is a traveler and a son of a wealthy Italian merchant (which would
> make my persona a quarter Russian, quarter German, and half Italian). And I
> wasn't thinking so much of the periodicity of it. I would think olives in
> Russia would be period because Rus was located near the Mediterranean and
> didn't part of the Ottoman EMpire reside in the Balkans which could have
> introduced the olive?

I don't think olives grow very well in any part of
the Kievan Rus (checking school atlas - nope, the
northern boundary of modern olive cultivation
skirts the southern Black Sea coast), but olive
oil was a trade good in the later middle ages
(witness many period German and English cookbooks)
and anyone involved in trade would be able to get
their hands on it, through Novgorod or the Black
Sea ports. Where you can take olive oil you can
take pickled olives . . . so now you need a reason
for your persona to want to.

Giano