[Sca-cooks] Re: artichoke quote was roast turkey

[Johnna Holloway]

If one continues reading in the same entry, one also finds that Wright 
mentions
the following as regards artichokes.

The nineteenth-century Italian botanist Targioni-Tozzetti describes the 
introduction
of the artichoke to Tuscany around 1466, pointing out that Mattioli said 
it was
brought to Naples from Sicily. As far as an early European distinction 
between
the cardoon and the artichoke, the French historian Henri Bresc cites 
evidence
of the artichoke being grown in the gardens of Norman Sicily (1091–1194);
the documents distinguish the plant from the cardoon.
Ermolao Barbaro, in his In Dioscoridem corollariorum libri quinque,
finally published in 1530, writes that at the end of the fifteenth 
century artichokes
were not always available in Italy; the implication may be that they 
were not
particularly esteemed at that time. The artichoke, he said, speaking of 
Venice, is
found only in the foreign gardens in the Moorish quarter.
The artichoke was brought to the New World by the French and
Spanish colonizers in the sixteenth century.
Today the Mediterranean and California are the major producers of 
artichokes.

Wright does not include or list Scappi as a source by the way.

Johnna Holloway wrote:

> The source of this section for all those wondering about the
> Harvard Common Press source is
> Clifford Wright's book Mediterranean Vegetables, 2001.
>
> Johnnae
>
> Chris Stanifer wrote:
>
>> From this information, I assume that the Artichoke, though cultivated 
>> in Italy during SCA period,
>> was not a 'mainstream' item.
>> William de Gradfort
>>
>