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

[Terry Decker]

> > corn, wild rice, amaranth, quinoa, sunflowers, arrowroot, cassava
(yuca),
> beans, lima beans, peanuts, zucchini, pumpkin and squash (yellow-flowered
> squashes), potato, sweet potato, green beans, jerusalem artichokes
> >
>
> I thought that yams and peanuts were African in origin and thus know to
late
> period Europeans.
> >
> Daniel

Yam (genus Dioscorea) is not sweet potato (genus Ipomea), although American
usage makes them synonymous.  Peanuts (Arachis hypogaea) are native to the
Brazilian highlands bordering on Boliva, Peru and Columbia.

True yams were already known in Europe.

Sweet potatoes are first described by Columbus and are recorded in a number
of 16th Century accounts (see Hakluyt, Richard, Principle Navigations,
Voyages, and Discoveries of the English Nation).  There is a story I have
been unable to verify that they entered England from Spain during Henry
Tudor's marriage to Catherine of Aragon.

Peanuts are believed to have entered Africa as ship provisions for the
Portuguese slave trade.

Bear