[Sca-cooks] Partly OP: Brown vs. white rice?

[Daniel Myers]

Many good points made by Bear and my crank theory is fully refuted.  I 
stand corrected.
Bother, another perfectly good hypothesis shot down by those pesky 
facts (this is how we learn, eh?).

So we're still left with the overall answer of "I dunno".  There's got 
to be something left to check - mill records?  Shipping manifests?


On Feb 16, 2004, at 2:02 PM, Terry Decker wrote:
>> How early was rice grown in Spain and Italy?  Rice is featured in many
>> English sources from the 14th and 15th centuries.  Also note that
>> saffron is one of most common spices referred to in "Two
>> Fifteenth-Century Cookery Books" - it appears to have been used
>> extensively in spite of its cost.  Sugar was brought in to England 
>> from
>> Cyprus and was still used quite heavily.
>
> Rice was being grown in Spain in the early 8th Century, shortly after 
> the
> Moorish conquest in 711.  It was being grown in Egypt prior to that 
> and was
> probably being grown along the Levantine Coast to Syria.  It was being 
> grown
> in Cyprus and Sicily by the 10th Century and was being grown in the Po
> Valley of Northern Italy by the 15th Century.
>
> England imported sugar from Cyprus, Egypt and the Barbary Coast.  Rice 
> would
> have probably been cheaper than sugar.
>
>> Further, the preservative effect of de-germing the rice would still be
>> important if the rice were imported to northern Europe from the
>> Mediterranean basin instead of from the Far East.
>>
>> - Doc
>
> I think you are overestimating the value of de-germing.  Most grain was
> shipped whole and milled as needed.  I see no reason for rice to be any
> different.  Most grain was eaten within two years and most milling did 
> not
> seperate the germ.  With favorable winds, it is only a few weeks from 
> the
> Mediterranean to northern Europe, so long term storage was not an 
> issue.