[Sca-cooks] Devilish Derivations

[Johnna Holloway]

It makes sense with some qualifications.
There is a lag time generally between when a recipe
becomes available in print and in general use and when an ingredient
may have started being used. Cookbooks in print may not be the most
reliable measure of this. Agricultural reports and household records
in the original might be the more reliable sources. (The early reliable 
mention of
potatoes in Ireland is in a lease holding.) Every country and indeed
every region would need these sorts of records available and then someone
will have to read through them to determine what is mentioned and when.
Then one will have to figure out just exactly what plant was intended
when the 16th or 17th or 18th century record says they grew "whatever."
Was it the red "whatever" that was later grown in England or was it the
black "whatever" that was grown in Italy? What is the closest heirloom
version of this "whatever" that we still have? Etc., etc.
And while for very special events ( head tables or A&S contests come
to mind) we can purchase and prepare expensive heirloom special
foods, it doesn't help  that it's largely cost prohibitive to try and
prepare a feast for 200 using only heirloom foods. We still have to prepare
the majority of feasts using only the local and warehouse markets. At 
this point
we can say then that "whatever" was grown in this region in the early
17th century, but you'll have to substitute ingredients for it, as it's too
expensive to procure in today's markets.

The Stuart Peachey publications do list ingredients under broad categories.
The Book of Salads 1580-1660 lists for instance plants mentioned by Tusser
that might be eaten in salads.

Johnnae llyn Lewis


kingstaste at mindspring.com wrote:

>Ok, I'm as guilty as anyone, having posted my Alton Brown response, but I
>really don't want my late-night revelation to go un-noticed.  This idea
>(below) seems like an original thought to me (those are harder to come by
>every day, so I don't want one to slip by if I've actually had one).
>If we can judge when a new food becomes part of a
>country/region/nationalities' cuisine by when recipes start to appear for
>it, that seems a fairly significant help to those looking to document
>certain foods that are questionable.  Does this idea hold water, or is it
>full of holes?
>Christianna
>
>-------------------------
>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
>
>  
>