[Sca-cooks] Devilish Derivations

[kingstaste at mindspring.com]

Good points.  I was thinking on this as I was driving to the airport, you
would have to give say 25 years more or less farther back from the earliest
recipe you found to accomodate general use as opposed to published use.
Would the lease holdings be true of something that would be sold as a
dried/ground spice?  I know the herbalists were talking about red pepper
plants early (Columbus' ship's physician brought some back with him
evidently), but I wonder if they didn't also bring back the dried peppers
and/or ground spice.  If that was the case, then it wouldn't be showing up
in agricultural records as early as general use would be.
Hmmm...
Christianna


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