[Sca-cooks] bay berries

[Stefan li Rous]

Old Marian replied to me with:
> Stefan li Rous wrote:
> > Bay berries? Plenty of bay leaf sources around, but I don't know 
> where
> > you would get bay berries, unless you had someone with a laurel/bay
> > tree. Anyone know? Are these bay berries used fresh? Or dried?
>
> Actually, bayberries are a native American plant, with a waxy
> covering to the berry from which bayberry candles are made.  It
> is not related to the laurel.  See:
> http://www.hort.purdue.edu/newcrop/herbhunters/bayberry.html
Well okay, but I was referring to the bayberries mentioned in an 
Apicius recipe. Somehow, I don't think Apicius was referring to a New 
World plant.

The recipe, from an earlier message by Arwen was:
> Lucanian Sausages
> Apicius, #61:
> Lucanicae: ... Teritur piper, cuminum, satureia, ruta, petroselinum, 
> condimentum, bacae lauri, liquamen, et admiscetur pulpa bene tunas ita 
> ut denuo bene cum ipso subtrito fricetur.  Cum liquamine admixto, 
> pipere integro et abundanti pinguedine et nucleis incies in intestinum 
> perquam tenuatim perductum, et sic ad fumum suspenditur.
>
> Translation:  Lucanian Sausages:  ... Pepper is ground with cumin, 
> savory, rue, parsley, condiments, bay berries, and garum.  Finely 
> ground meat is mixed in, then ground again together with the other 
> ground ingredients.  Mix with garum, peppercorns, and plenty of fat, 
> and pine nuts; fill a casing stretched extremely thin, and thus it is 
> hung in smoke. [Giacosa, p. 182]

It sounds like either we have a translation error, a substitution for 
ease of finding an ingredient (which I doubt as this is a translation 
and not a redaction) or we actually have two different plants with 
perhaps the New World one being named after the Old World one. I don't 
know Latin, but "bacae lauri" does look like laurel berry.

The link given doesn't talk of the bayberry they are talking about 
being edible, just it's use as a wax source.

Stefan
--------
THLord Stefan li Rous    Barony of Bryn Gwlad    Kingdom of Ansteorra
    Mark S. Harris           Austin, Texas          
StefanliRous at austin.rr.com
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