[Sca-cooks] RE: Tomato evidence

[jenne at fiedlerfamily.net]

> No, not really.  Admittedly, the tomato has the weakest case of the
> four I mentioned.  However, I find it quite incredible that there is
> hard documentation for the tomato plant, but that in 50 years, no
> one had the curiosity to sample the very appealing fruits.

There are a number of issues at hand... one of the big ones is that so
much of our documentation comes either from England or other places where
early tomatoes don't grow well. Even today, underripe tomatoes are not
terribly appealing.

>I also would
> suspect that ANY plant from the New World was the subject of
> quite a bit of experimentation as so many of them were so unique
> and successful in culinary terms.  Tobacco, pineapple, vanilla, chocolate,
> etc.

Vanilla wasn't actually that popular and successful until artificial
pollination techniques were invented for the Vanilla orchids, because
large scale production was not possible.

You see a boom in chocolate that does seem to be post, rather than during
period, with the rise of chocolate drinks and chocolate-houses.

There is a period text which I have not struggled through yet, though I
have  a copy-- Akim, you will want to get this, as it the first work that
covers New World materials extensively:
_Ioyfull newes out of the newfound world_ by Nicolas Monardes. The
earliest translation in Early English Books Online is 1577 but it was
written long before that in Spanish.

> jumbo concepts and invented false data.  This is especially IMO
> the case with the vile charlatan Culpepper who even today has
> undeserved authority in herbal lore.

Culpepper's authority comes from his popularity-- over the last 4
centuries, copy after copy of his works have been reprinted. His advice is
certainly not considered sound today. But the question of how much of his
information came from the Royal Society of Physicians as he claimed
continutes to haunt (and we all know how poor the medical knowledge of the
early physicians was-- 90% of their instruction came from texts that had
no relationship at all with the real world).

Culpeper can be regarded as a source text for 17th & 18th century herb
use, given the number of editions the Family Physician went through.

Akim, which of the histories of herbals are you familiar with? Would
anyone be interested in some titles to follow up on this?

BTW, does anyone else have any concerns about some of our old standards
such as Markham, Digby and Plat in terms of whether they are descriptive
of what  actually happened, or Martha-Stewartish proscriptive of what
people could do if they were willing to go to the trouble (but probably
didn't)?

-- Jadwiga Zajaczkowa
jenne at fiedlerfamily.net OR jenne at tulgey.browser.net OR jahb at lehigh.edu
	"Index your brain."