[Sca-cooks] Medieval and/or Middle Eastern Recipies containing Tomatoes

[kingstaste at mindspring.com]

Kinjal,
  You wrote:
However, that is not the extent of either 'medieval' or SCA cooking.
I fully agree that any recipe submitted in period competition from
these listed areas should be 'suspect', while all of these cultures
regulary offer dishes as 'medieval' with tomatoes -- it is
definitional, perhaps -- but also indicative of 'available
substititutes'.


     You refer above to the documentation I sent regarding Western European
sources and the appearance of tomatoes after the discovery of the New World,
and the fact that there are no recipes for tomatoes other than some very
late-period ones in Italy and Spain until the late 1690's.  I am confusd
therefore to your reference to "all of these cultures
regulary offer dishes as 'medieval' with tomatoes".  I know of no recipes in
any of these cultures that contain anything that resembles a tomato within
the medieval period.  Granted, I have only been studying this topic for 26
years, and have a mere 50 or so volumes on the subject, so I am very curious
as to your sources for this information.  What period sources contain
objects that should be considered related to the tomato? Can you give me an
example of a recipe you are thinking of?

 You go on to state:
Mid-Eastern and East-Asian recipies however, should be allowed to
contain 'tomato like' ingredience for period dishes. Please note --
I do not claim that the 'vegatable/fruit/berry' they used is
identical to what we now consider the 'tomato'. Many food items used
in ancient times have been replaced with better, modern
alternatives.  African sources indicate knowledge of both 'tomatoes'
and 'peanuts' in pre-Columbian times.  Views are mixed as to whether
this indicated early travel between the continents, or that common
food items were used that 'resembled or equated' these new items and
have been replaced by the better strains.


  Again, I have to ask which sources you are citing.  In Waverly Root's
"Food", he states that while the African slaves called the peanut 'nguba'
(where we get the word 'goober' from) when they saw the peanut upon their
being brought to this continent, they were calling it by a name they knew
from their homeland, which refered to a Bambara or Congo groundnut.  This
ground nut was not a peanut, but it was the closest thing they knew to it
when they saw the new food. Root says: "It is a native of South America,
probably Brazil, and was only introduced to the east when Portuguese slavers
planted it on the West African coast to provide cheap and nourishing food
for their captives while they were waiting for ships to carry them to the
New World".
    As for the tomato, this is what Root has to say about it's appearance in
Asia and other non-European areas:
    "The tomato was slow about infiltrating Asia.  It is mentioned in Java
in 1658, as the tomata, though we do not know which Europeans brought it
there, and this is also true for Malaysia, where it was reported in 1755.
But in Thunberg's supposedly complete listing of the food plants of Japan in
1776 it does not appear.  Not until the nineteenth century is it on record
as being cultivated there.
    Africa offers the greatest mystery of tomato history.  It was found
growing in the interior in 1860, but nobody seems to know how it got there.
The best guess would seem to be that it was introduced by slavers, but in
that case it seems that it should have been spotted on the coast; and, a
greater mystery still, the Africans, who usually seemed ready to eat
anything and everything - everything familiar at least - had not realized it
was edible.  They were astounded when they saw a European eat one."


You conclude with:
Actually, this should not matter in SCA cooking.  There is
enough 'evidence' to indicate a high degree of confidence that early
dishes contained ingredience for which 'tomato' is the best
allowable ingredient or substitute.  Certainly if I were to judge a
future competition any entry that documented
"the ingredient 'domatest'is commonly translates as tomato but may
be a number of similar period foods -- I have used 'pear tomatoes'
as the best and most popular match" would be allowed -- and eaten
with appreciation.

     kinjal


    I am still unclear as to your 'evidence'.  If you are saying that it is
a reasonable substitution for another ingredient, I would still want to know
what other ingredient you are refering to.  I seem to have come into this
conversation late, as I only picked up on it when the thread name came
across as "Medieval Recipes".  Is the word "domatest" what you are refering
to?  Where does that appear in a medieval and/or Middle Eastern recipe?  I
did a quick Google search of the Florilegium archives and the internet at
large, and didn't get any hits at all on that particular word/spelling.
      Making substitutions is a slippery slope, you move from 'documentably
period' to 'perioid' to 'I did it this way because I liked it' fairly
quickly.  Mind you, there is nothing wrong with cooking foods that you like,
only when you try to make justifications for their periodicity.  However, it
does sound as if you are interested in creating period or plausibly period
recipes, so understanding your sources and how to interpret them does become
important.

    And, I think this is much more 'on topic' than a disussion of Ice Cream
stores in Meridies, so no need to take it off-list.  Please, do help me to
understand what you are basing your conclusions on.
    Mistress Christianna MacGrain