[Sca-cooks] food question

[Terry Decker]

Coffee is from Africa, Abyssinia to be precise, although there are a couple
other species spread through the Congo basin and in West Africa which are
cultivated these days.

It was known as a medicine as early as 900 CE in Persia, but it's use as a
beverage is probably no earlier than 1250.  It's general use in the Islamic
world begins around 1450 in Yemen and southern Arabia.  By the time it
reached Egypt, the Reconquest had taken Spain.

The earliest European usage is Northern Italy in the last quarter of the
16th Century (IIRC).  General European use is all post-Period.

Bear

>Well, I'd love to see your evidence that Scully
>decided coffee was New World. The Arabs brought it out
>of Asia, somewhere in the 1400s or so, and through
>them, it went to Spain, and then to the Americas- off
>the top of my head. Likely have the date wrong- just
>know that it's well out of my period.
>
>Phlip