[Sca-cooks] chile, chili, chilli

[Terry Decker]

>> 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.
>
> If I read Bears message correctly, Columbus' comments are about how much 
> he _can_ send, not
> how much he _did_ send.  Every account that I have read always talks about 
> how Columbus
> brought back peppers from the New World.  What they don't write about is 
> how he actually
> accomplished this feat, since it must have taken months to return to 
> Spain.  Today I could
> pick a peck of peppers and hop onto a plane and be in Spain in six or 
> seven hours and the
> peppers would still be edible when I arrived.  How did Columbus manage to 
> arrive in Spain
> with a cargo of edible peppers?  Or tomatoes for that fact?  If he brought 
> seeds, which
> would survive such a voyage, it would take some time for the seeds to be 
> planted, hopefully
> grow and thrive and hopefully bear fruit.  But I cannot buy that he sent 
> caravelles full of
> picked fruit that arrived in perfect condition months later.
>
> Huette

You are correct, Columbus was reporting that he could ship 50 caravelles a 
year (IIRC).  Nowhere is it said that he actually did so.  The Diario does 
not report what he brought back, but that information may be in Peter 
Martyr's works.

The return trip to Spain took about 2 months.  Fresh peppers might not 
survive, but dried peppers could.

Bear