[Sca-cooks] Re: artichoke quote

[Terry Decker]

> --- Terry Decker <t.d.decker at worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>
> > If, as The Cambridge World History of food states, that the Ancient
Romans
> > ate artichokes and brought them to the British Isles, your thesis
doesn't
> > hold water.
>
>
> That reference may be a mistake.  The jury is still out on this one.  The
'artichoke' of ancient
> Rome may well have been a cardoon...
>
> William de Grandfort

Yes the jury is still out, which is why one should not accept the passage of
Clifford Wright's you quoted as authority.  It avoids a number of linguistic
issues and opposing opinions, so Wright may be in error as much as you
believe the editors of The Cambridge World History of Food may be in error.

For example, Geffory Grigson in A Dictionary of English Plant Names suggests
that the cardoon was cultivated from the artichoke.  The Oxford Book of Food
Plants states that the globe artichoke was known to the Ancient Greeks and
Romans.  These sources are as authoritative and scholarly as Wright and they
disagree with his position.  Are they also mistaken?  I haven't checked
Fuchs yet or a number of other sources which I will as time permits.

At least one opinion is the artichoke is of Sicilian origin or that it is of
Carthaginian origin and transplanted to Sicily.  Not much evidence pro or
con, but it fits the timeline.  I like the argument, but I haven't put it to
the test.

What is obvious to me is the subject of artichokes deserves some serious
research into the sources of current opinion rather than authoritative
pronuncements based on absent, incomplete or erroneous sources with
argumentative contexts we don't understand.

Bear