[Sca-cooks] Winter Squash

[jenne at fiedlerfamily.net]

> Also, while I agree that Lagenaria is a likely guess for the medieval
> "pumpkin," do we know that it is more than a guess? _The Four Seasons
> of the House of Cerruti_ and related books do have pictures.

Well, the lagenaria gourds do come in the sizes and shapes that
the pictures depict, and they were known in Europe before 1492. I'd have
to dig into some archeaobotanical texts to be sure that lagenaria seeds
have been found, though. We do know that the gourds/pompions had hard
walls that could be scrapped clean of the flesh and dried to make
containers (cf. Walafrid Strabo, I believe), so we are probably not
looking at a melon or cucumber, the varieties of C. pepo documented to the
old world.

Your Grace, do you have suspicions as to alternate identities for the
pompions and gourds mentioned in pre-1492 recipes?

-- Jadwiga Zajaczkowa, Knowledge Pika jenne at fiedlerfamily.net
"It is no use telling me that there are bad aunts and good aunts.
At the  core, they are all alike. Sooner or later, out pops the
cloven hoof." -- P.G. Wodehouse, _The Code of the Woosters_