[Sca-cooks] Winter Squash

[Terry Decker]

Pumpkin was used prior to 1492 to refer to gourds of genus Lagenaria,
probably some of the basket gourds similar in size to the New World pumpkin.

New World squash appear in Leonard Fuchs Herbal of 1543 and they were
probably in use in Europe even earlier.  Late 16th Century Italian paintings
show a number of different New World squash so they were probably readily
available by then.

Bear


>I'm reading through Redon et al. The Medieval Kitchen. In several recipes,
>recipe 25 in particular, they use pumpkin as the squash of choice, where
the
>translation (and presumably the original, but I can't read French or
>Italian) states squash. I had thought that pumpkin was a New World food.
>What squashes were available in France and Italy, especially in the winter?
>
>Thanks,
>Amanda Blackwolf
>
>_______________________________________________
>Sca-cooks mailing list
>Sca-cooks at ansteorra.org
>http://www.ansteorra.org/mailman/listinfo/sca-cooks