[Sca-cooks] chile, chili, chilli

[lilinah at earthlink.net]

OK, so the Spaniards found all sorts of odd foodstuffs in the New 
World. And they took many of these back to Europe where they were 
planted as botanical novelties. Oh, yeah, and turkeys which they 
actually ate...

And there are even some surviving recipes or discussion of how to 
serve tomatoes and potatoes from the 16th century.

But what about capsicums? I gather that red peppers were considered 
as a substitute for black pepper... Then the Portuguese and Spanish 
took them around the planet with them and people in Asia and Africa 
eagerly adopted them.

But what about capsicums in Europe before 1601? I've found a website 
that claims that some small region of Spain quickly adopted them 
(where they still make smoked dried capsicum powder). But other than 
that, it seems that Europe turned up its culinary nose at capsicums - 
other than the Hungarians who got paprika from the Ottomans by way of 
the Bulgarians (and i'm not sure quite how the Ottomans got them - 
from Asia by way of the Spanish and Portuguese?)

Does anyone know of references to Europeans eating capsicums in food 
in Europe and what they thought of them?
-- 
Urtatim (that's err-tah-TEEM)
the persona formerly known as Anahita