[Sca-cooks] Lemons in Middle English

[Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius]

Also sprach Phlip:
>Ene bichizh ogsen baina shuu...
>
>>  All right, I'm tired of this thread, but-
>>
>>  This is NOT proof of the use of lemons (or indeed any citrus fruit) _IN
>>  CUISINE_ in England, but is of interest in a literary sense.
>>
>>  The word 'citryn' appears in the Canterbury Tales, as the description of a
>>  yellow color.
>>
>>  It is in the description of Arcite, in the Knight's Tale. Lines 2165-2167
>say:
>>
>>  "His crispe heer lyk ringes was yronne,
>>  And that was yelow, and glytered as the sonne.
>>  His nose was heigh, his eyen bright citryn,"
>>
>>  All of my glosses have 'citryn' as 'lemon colored', but there is also the
>>  possibility that a green-yellow or yellow-green is indicated- after all-
>>  humans do not generally have yellow eyes, but some do have green eyes.
>>
>>  The word 'lemon' in any spelling does not appear in Chaucer's works.
>>
>>  'Lainie
>
>Be interested here, to see which came first, the color or the fruit? Was the
>fruit named for the color, or vice versa? Same with oranges- can anagram
>orange, but can't rhyme it, unless I'm being silly in a limerick ;-) But,
>where do the words derive from? Any of you folks with access to an OED have
>a clue?

Well, what does naranj (or whatever it is in the Arabic whence it's 
supposed to come) mean? Does it refer to the color?

On a related note, my lady wife reminds me that Chaucer may be 
referring to the color of the semi-precious stone, citrine, which 
was, she says, a favorite of the Romans, and well-known in period 
Europe.

Adamantius, who wears Roman jewelry when Ceandra makes the stuff, but 
otherwise is no authority
-- 




"S'ils n'ont pas de pain, vous fait-on dire, qu'ils  mangent de la 
brioche!" / "If there's no bread to be had, one has to say, let them 
eat cake!"
	-- attributed to an unnamed noblewoman by Jean-Jacques 
Rousseau, "Confessions", 1782

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