[Sca-cooks] Re: (Period cookery questions)

[Elizabeth A Heckert]

On Thu, 9 May 2002 07:47:04 -0500 (CDT) "Pixel, Goddess and Queen"
<pixel at hundred-acre-wood.com> writes:

>I don't remember reading this in either of the two books. Of course,
>it's
>been a little while (and of course they are at home), but this sounds
>awfully like Constance Hieatt, who (as I understand it) only *very*
>recently found out (from someone on this list, IIRC) that grains of
>paradise are not cardamom? I know in the revised edition of _Pleyn
>Delit_
>that she still says to use cardamom in the place of grains of paradise
>but
>admits that she has never tasted the latter.

  Here's a second answer:  I have most of a late nineteenth century
Oxford English Dictionary. (it was free.)  Under "Grain of Paradise"
(which is in the larger heading of "grain") the OED says that it is a
term for the pods of Aframomom melegueta, used as a spice and a medicine,
and that the pods were also called guinea grains.  That entry said to see
the entry for cardamom.

   The entry for cardamom says that the word is applied to seed capsules
of various species of Aframomom and Elettaria, used for medicine, in
food, etc.  Then it says that the only kind included in the British
pharmacopoeia is the Malabar cardamom, Elettaria cardamomum.  *Then* it
says that cardamom is occasionally applied to the capsules of Aframomum
melegueta, usually called Grains of Paradise

   This came from Vol. IV part II G  (pg. 339) and Vol. II part I, C-comm
(pg. 112)

    Elizabeth


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