[Sca-cooks] Compost: Black Radishes, Carrots

[Terry Decker]

Try Pliny, "There is one kind of wild pastinaca which grows spontaneously;
by the Greeks it is known as staphylinos.  Another kind is grown either from
the root transplanted or else from seed, the ground being dug to a very
considerable depth for the purpose. It begins to be fit for eating at the
end of the year, but it is still better at the end of two; even then,
however, it preserves its strong pungent flavour, which it is found
impossible to get rid of."

Athenaeus, and possibly Apicius, if De Re Coquinaria truly is Apicius' work,
first used carota to describe the carrot. To Athenaeus, parsnips and carrots
were the same vegetable, while one of Apicius' recipes is for Caroetas et
Pastinacae, providing a differentiation between the two vegetables.  In the
2nd Century, Galen established the differentiation between the parsnip and
the carrot by naming the carrot Daucus pastinaca.

European carrots were white until about the 13th Century and red and yellow
carrots were only introduced into England by Flemish refugees in the 14th
Century.  So for the Forme of Cury, pasternak might mean either the white
carrot or the parsnip.

Bear

>Daniel Myers wrote:
>>Pasternak can mean both carrot and parsnip - and as others have said,
>>they probably used whichever they had on hand.  I can usually get
>>parsnips here, so I usually use both (adds variety).
>
>I believe you both, this is what i have heard. But where does this
>information come from? Where does it say so explicitly?
>
>Anahita