[Sca-cooks] Old World vs. New World Fruits

[ranvaig at columbus.rr.com]

>If it's yellow or orange inside, it isn't a yam, it's a sweet 
>potato. These are from North America and show up in the 16th c. as 
>batata. There's at least one recipe in the Elizabethan corpus, and a 
>recipe or two in the Spanish-language corpus, and ISTR a possible 
>recipe in the German-language corpus.

http://waynesword.palomar.edu/ww0804.htm#columbus
Archaeological evidence shows that sweet potatoes were cultivated in 
South America by 2400 B.C. and fossilized sweet potatoes from the 
Andes have been dated at 8,000 to 10,000 years old.  Although the 
sweet potato is clearly native to South America, it was also 
cultivated in Polynesia as early as 1200 A.D.

Ranvaig