[Sca-cooks] Pre-Columbian Foods

[Huette von Ahrens]

--- Christine Seelye-King
<kingstaste at mindspring.com> wrote:
> So, would anyone like to venture a guess as to
> what they did with
> cranberries?  I've had a sauce cooked up with
> them using maple syrup that
> was pretty good, but it doesn't strike me as
> the way an aboriginal would
> have prepared it.  I seem to recall reading
> about them being included in
> Pemmican (ground jerky, fat and fruits formed
> into small packs for
> traveling - making stew from, etc.)
> Christianna

This is from the Oxford Companion to Food:

When the Pilgrim Fathers arrived in North 
America, they found a local cranberry, Vaccinium
macrocarpon, which had berries twice the size of
those familiar to Europeans, and an equally good
flavour.  American Indians were accustomed to
eating these fresh or dried, and to adding the
dried fruits as an ingredient in pemmican (a
dried, preserved meat product).  Cranberries
contain large amounts of benzoic acid, which is 
a natural preservative and accounts for this
practice ...

Huette

=====
Blessed are they who can laugh at themselves for they 
shall never cease to be amused.

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