[Sca-cooks] chile, chili, chilli

[lilinah at earthlink.net]

From: "Terry Decker" <t.d.decker at worldnet.att.net>
>In contemporary sources, Columbus comments on the number of caravelles full
>he can send to Spain.  Oviedo places them in Italy around 1535.  They appear
>in Fuchs Herbal of 1545.  Turner places them in England by 1538.  I don't
>know if these authors merely referenced the plant or mentioned their
>culinary properties.

Yes, that is the "problem".  What were the Europeans doing with all 
these chiles? They don't show up in any food i've heard of...

>Bernardino de Sahagun describes how chilies were used in cooking in Mexico
>in the late 1570s.

I have Sophie Cole's book on the Earliest American Cuisines (or 
whatever the exact title is) as well as several of Diana Kennedy's 
Mexican cookbooks with lots of quotes from Spaniards in the New 
World. So i know that in the New World Europeans were (often rather 
grudgingly) eating New World foods.

But i wonder what the Spaniards back in Europe were making of chiles, 
either intellectually or culinarily?

>But the earliest European reference I've encountered to
>eating peppers is a recipe for tomato sauce from the late 17th Century.

Like an Arabiata?

Well, I'll go check the Florilegium...
-- 
Urtatim (that's err-tah-TEEM)
the persona formerly known as Anahita