[Sca-cooks] roast turkey

[Chris Stanifer]

--- Terry Decker <t.d.decker at worldnet.att.net> wrote:

> I would point out that there are a number of cardoon recipes in Apicius
> which would certainly apply to the artichoke.  Apicius may be 1st Century,
> but extant copies of it certainly fall within SCA period.  As Latin had no
> word for the artichoke, carduus would have been used for both plants.


Here is a reference from the Harvard Common Press, which seems to support the notion that Apicius'
"Artichoke" was very likely a cardoon:

"Professor Andrew Watson, following the botanist Georges Gibault, claimed that the artichoke was
developed from the cardoon; that only the cardoon was known in the Greco-Roman world, designated
by names such as kaktos, cynara, carduus, scolymus, and spondylium; and that there is no reference
in classical literature to a plant of this family with edible flesh on the bracts. Although J.
André suggests that several Roman authors may have referred to the artichoke (or the cardoon)
using the word carduus, two of the most important authors, Palladius and Pliny, say nothing that
would make one think that the plant is not the cardoon. A recipe found in the Roman author
Apicius’s cookbook sounds as if it was meant for the soft stems of the cardoon rather than for the
artichoke. Theophrastos says explicitly that the stem of the kaktos is eaten, so almost certainly
he was referring to the cardoon. He goes on to mention another “thistle,” the pternix, which has
an edible receptacle but inedible bracts. "


Furthermore:

"It is impossible to tell whether the kharshuf used in the thirteenth-century Hispano-Muslim
cookery book the Kitab al-tabakh fi al-Magrib wa’l-Andalus was an artichoke or a cardoon. In any
case, other early cookery manuscripts such as the fourteenth-century Le ménagier de Paris, the
anonymous Italian Libro di cucina, and the Viandier of Taillevent conspicuously do not mention
artichokes."

>From this information, I assume that the Artichoke, though cultivated in Italy during SCA period,
was not a 'mainstream' item.

William de Gradfort

=====
Every heart to love will come... but like a refugee.


		
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