[Sca-cooks] Period carrots

[Amanda Baker]

Greetings,

        Because I am fascinated by all purple foods, I've been doing some
research into period carrots.  So my eyebrows shot up when I saw the SCA
Cooks digest from Monday with the following message:

>From: "Robin Carroll-Mann" <rcmann4 at earthlink.net>
>Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Period squash
>
>> > If you go to
>> > http://www.kfki.hu/~arthp/html/b/beuckela/
>> > and look at the vegetable market, you can see some period Flemish
>> > squash.
>> >             Jeffrey Heilveil M.S.
>
>There are other paintings of food interest on the same site.  Among
>them:
>Pieter Aertsen, "Market Woman with Vegetable Stall"
>
>Joachim Beuckelar, "Vegetable Seller", "Market Scene", "Market
>Woman with Fruit, Vegetables, and Poultry", :Woman Selling
>Vegetables"
>
>Caravaggio, "Boy with a Basket of Fruit"
>
>I was especially interested in the orange carrots.

        I immediately pulled down the books, fired up my Web browser and
went hunting.  Now, Alan Davidson in his 'Oxford Companion to Food' states
in the entry on carrots (a) "The first sign of truly orange carrots is
in Dutch paintings of the C17th"; (b) "They [orange carrots] were first
described, also in the Netherlands*, in the C18th; (c) "From contemporary
botanists' descriptions, and in particular from a a paiting ('Christ and the
adulteress', Pieter Aertsen, 1559) it is clear that all these carrots were pale
yellow or purple".  So, I looked at the reproduction of that particular
painting on the Website cited above ... and the carrots looked orange to me.

        My preliminary conclusion is, therefore, that the apparent orange colour
of the carrots illustrated on this Website is only an artefact of the image
reproduction technology, since the expert - Alan Davidson - and his sources,
who have presumably seen the originals, describe the carrots in 'Christ and
the adulteress' as 'pale yellow'.  Colours are notoriously difficult to judge
from reproductions, I believe.
        http://www.cals.wisc.edu/media/news/02_00/carrot_pigment.html
implies that Davidson's analysis is based upon reasonably old research 'About 40
years ago, a Dutch researcher used paintings depicting vegetables to gather
historical information about carrots.'  So, has anyone on SCA Cooks seen the
_originals_ of any of these paintings, or any more recent further discussion of
whether they depict orange, or pale yellow, roots?

        All the best from Wales,

        Amanda


* BTW, 'Holland' is a district of the country called in English, 'The
Netherlands', a bit like a UK county, a Canadian province or USA state.
Bit like calling the UK, 'England', or Canada, 'Alberta' or the USA, 'Maine',
really :-)