[Sca-cooks] Devilish Derivations

[kingstaste at mindspring.com]

Hm, I've just had a thought.  The earliest these 'Deviled' dishes show up is
mid-1700's as far as I can tell.  I'm wondering if that's the real way to
define when red peppers started showing up in general cuisine.  They didn't
use the term before that (unless someone shows up with a period reference
that has something with the term in it), so if it just starts showing up all
of a sudden, we have to look at why that might be happening, no?  If, as we
often state, the foods that were introduced from the New World took time to
be introduced, this might be the threshold of when they started to make it
into culinary usages.  It does make sense that they'd call stuff with
cayenne 'deviled', I would agree with that description ;)  And if it was new
to the tastes of diners, the term makes sense.
What say you?
Christianna