[Sca-cooks] Fitzgibbon on Pomedoro
Heather Musinski
rachaol at yahoo.com
Mon May 16 16:01:00 PDT 2005
Here is her rather controversial assertion...
"pomidoro, Italian for tomato, which has been used extensively in many form in Italy since the 15th century, when seeds from China were first brought back and grown by an Italian monk, Fra Serenio."
I haven't found any reference to pomidoro in the Italian I've worked with, though I'll have to check out this Fra Serenio now. The reference to China is intriguing. I am aware of the new book about China's expedition to the New World...1421: The Year China discovered America. I haven't read it, and am interested to hear what others think.
Rachaol
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Today's Topics:
1. Re: swiss chard =/= beet greens? (Terry Decker)
2. Re: Period Tomatoes (Terry Decker)
3. Re: cakes (Terry Decker)
4. Re: Medieval and/or Middle Eastern Recipies
containingTomatoes (ekoogler1 at comcast.net)
5. Re: new world foods; old world names (Terry Decker)
6. Re: cakes (Carole Smith)
7. RE: Medieval and/or Middle Eastern RecipiescontainingTomatoes
(Ron Carnegie)
8. RE: Kitchen amusements (kingstaste at mindspring.com)
9. RE: sometimes I love this list (kingstaste at mindspring.com)
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Message: 1
Date: Mon, 16 May 2005 14:19:56 -0500
From: "Terry Decker"
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] swiss chard =/= beet greens?
To: , "Cooks within the SCA"
Message-ID: <000b01c55a4c$4af5bc40$dfaf4a0c at toshibauser>
Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset="iso-8859-1";
reply-type=original
Swiss chard is Beta vulgaris var. cicla. You should be able to check that
in any available dictionary.
Bear
> Greetings! I had heard (and told others) that swiss chard was the modern
> version of 'leaf beet'. Of course now I can't remember where I found
> that info, and some friends of mine and I were wondering about it.
> Anyone have a more concrete answer and be awake enough to produce it?
> Thank you!
>
> (Stefan, if the answer is in the Florilegium, that's wonderful but my
> brain is not ready to handle the kind of search statement that would get
> that out without trudging through lots of recipes calling for
> chard/beets!)
>
> --
> -- Jadwiga Zajaczkowa, Knowledge Pika jenne at fiedlerfamily.net
> "All of us have special ones who have loved us into being. Would you
> just take, along with me, ten seconds to think of the people who have
> helped you become who you are. " -- Mr. Fred Rogers
> _______________________________________________
> Sca-cooks mailing list
> Sca-cooks at ansteorra.org
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>
------------------------------
Message: 2
Date: Mon, 16 May 2005 14:23:43 -0500
From: "Terry Decker"
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Period Tomatoes
To: , "Cooks within the SCA"
Message-ID: <000d01c55a4c$c6e8d850$dfaf4a0c at toshibauser>
Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset="iso-8859-1";
reply-type=original
One of the reasons I stopped competing many years ago was the inability of
judges to determine the quality of my documentation. Some downgraded the
documentation based on their personal opinions. Others ignored it.
Bear
>> I have also heard people who have judged contests state, "Sometimes you
>> just have to accept the
>> entrant's documentation as being valid."
>
> I've heard that too. I found it very disconcerting.
>
> --
> -- Jadwiga Zajaczkowa, Knowledge Pika jenne at fiedlerfamily.net
------------------------------
Message: 3
Date: Mon, 16 May 2005 14:29:07 -0500
From: "Terry Decker"
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] cakes
To: "Cooks within the SCA"
Message-ID: <001301c55a4d$87e39db0$dfaf4a0c at toshibauser>
Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset="iso-8859-1";
reply-type=response
I checked the OED 2nd Ed., c. 1989 while I was at the state library this
morning for pound cake. The Glass entry is the first one cited, and the
entry is more extensive than the one in my copy.
As I recall, they were supposed to release a new revision of the OED a few
years ago, so maybe your correction has made it in.
Bear
> Also sprach Terry Decker:
>>I've got the Compact Edition of the OED, copyright 1971, Tenth Printing
>>(1975). So either the entries have been shortened or the information has
>>been added in a later revision.
>>
>>Bear
>
> I had, within the past couple of years, written to them about "pomace",
> and their assertion that its first usage was, as I recall, some time in
> the 18th century, which led to some folks in my kingdom interpreting a
> 15th-century mead recipe which used the word "pomys" as meaning to add
> apples to it, while I maintained that the crushed stuff from the previous
> recipe, in this case honeycombs, was, by definition, "pomace", and
> therefore what the recipe was indicating. There were no apples mentioned
> in any previous recipe, either.
>
> I don't know if they ever updated their entry for pomace, but I mailed
> them the pertinent info, they thanked me and said they'd check into it...
>
> Adamantius
------------------------------
Message: 4
Date: Mon, 16 May 2005 19:50:25 +0000
From: ekoogler1 at comcast.net
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Medieval and/or Middle Eastern Recipies
containingTomatoes
To: Cooks within the SCA
Message-ID:
<051620051950.13136.4288F9810005534D000033502207001641CE9D0A04090101050A at comcast.net>
Interestingly enough, I'm currently reading a book about the Chinese voyages possibly to and around the New World...during the 15th century. It's by Gavin Menzies, and is quite fascinating...and quite logical in its conclusions.
I mention it here because it indicates that many new world plants were brought to China by these voyages...and vice versa. I don't recollect, off the top of my head, any reference to tomatoes, specifically. Most of the references were to maize...and the grinding stones used to turn corn into flour...as well as peppers, etc....and how these have been found in the holds of ships that seem to date to this period. It also discusses how Chinese things made their way to the New World...things like the variety of chicken...which did not exist in Europe at the time...and, according to the book, could only have come from China.
I'm going to check the book tonight...I did bring it with me on my trip to NYC...and see if there is any mention of tomatoes.
Kiri
> I don't have the time to dig into this at the moment. I have another
> medical appointment
> this am and I have to leave for that.
>
> There has always been this nagging bother that certain reference books
> have listed that they had pomidoros (the tomato) in Italy in like the
> 12th century.
> Sources like Theodora Fitzgibbon's The Foods of the Western World.
> An Encyclopedia of Food from North America and Europe.
> New York: Quadrangle/the New York Times Book Company, 1976 say this.
> Some monks are credited with its introduction; I think Fitzgibbon said that
> it came from China. I don't have this book out at the moment so perhaps
> someone else can pull it off their shelf and repeat the entries. Of
> course if one looks
> up the entry under tomoto, it says New World!
> My best guess is that it was another plant with a name that came to be given
> to the tomato later. We see this done with various of the beans and
> pumpkins.
>
> There are of course 16th century references in Gerald to the tomato
> where it is
> said that they ate them in warm places like Spain.
>
> Johnnae
>
>
> >
> >
> _______________________________________________
> Sca-cooks mailing list
> Sca-cooks at ansteorra.org
> http://www.ansteorra.org/mailman/listinfo/sca-cooks
------------------------------
Message: 5
Date: Mon, 16 May 2005 15:35:07 -0500
From: "Terry Decker"
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] new world foods; old world names
To: "Cooks within the SCA"
Message-ID: <002f01c55a56$c0b79070$dfaf4a0c at toshibauser>
Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset="iso-8859-1";
reply-type=response
BTW, watermelons are of African origin and have been known in Europe since
Antiquity. The smaller round and elongated varieties are probably closer to
the base stock.
You also appear to be confusing the general definition of berry, a small
juicy fleshed fruit of any botanical description, with the botanical
definition of a berry, an indehiscent fruit derived from a single ovary
having the whole wall flesh, grapes and tomatoes make that cut too.
I would recommend, reading the appropriate entries in the 2-vol. Cambridge
World History of Food. It's expensive, so go through the library. McGee's
On Food and Cooking might be useful in this endeavor. The pertinent
sections of Pliny's Natural Histories is also useful in understanding what
people actually knew about their foodstuffs.
In period pepper is used as a general word for hot spices and as a specific
word for members of genus Piper. Black pepper or white pepper (Piper
nigrum), long pepper (Piper longnum), cubebs (Piper cubeba), betel peppper
(Piper betle, whose leaves are used to wrap betel nuts, Areca catechu) and
kava (Piper methysticum) are all things that might be referred to as pepper,
although the first three would have been more likely to reach the spicer.
IIRC, the transference of the name pepper to the New World Capsicums occurs
in Columbus's journal of his first voyage to the New World where he relates
an undetermined capsicum pepper (possibly a Scotch bonnet) to genus Piper
and notes that he can ship something like 89 caravelles of the peppers to
Spain each year. He also relates maize to millet and sweet potatoes to
yams.
Remember that most of the discoverers were not trained botanists and most
had no scientists on their expeditions. They either used variants of the
native names or used the name of something the new foodstuff closely
resembled.
Artichokes are an open question. Clifford Wright makes a case for
artichokes not being known until very late and that the plant being
referenced is the cardoon. Other sources are more liberal in their
consideration of the artichoke within the SCA period. Wright has a bad
tendency to avoid information that conflicts with his views, but he is one
of the few people to make a serious and systematic study. Personally, I
side with the more liberal view and would be willing to include artichokes
in a feast, but I also recognize the possibility my views are in error.
As for pumpkins, gourds come in a wide variety of colors. It is quite
possible that the gourds originally referred to a pumpkins may have been
orange and that C. pepo was similar enough to fill the bill. Pompion, the
anscestoral form of pumpkin derives from the Greek via the Latin pepon and
is translated as referring to a large ripe melon.
Bear
> ok, you get the idea. So here's the question:
> Peppers and watermelon and pumpkin/gourds. Can anyone recommend some
> sources
> that I can pass on to him and use myself? And whose idea was it to use
> established food names for newly discovered foods?
>
> :)
> Elisabetta
------------------------------
Message: 6
Date: Mon, 16 May 2005 13:49:36 -0700 (PDT)
From: Carole Smith
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] cakes
To: Cooks within the SCA
Message-ID: <20050516204936.41716.qmail at web31412.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
My mother used to make cakes with a large bowl and a wooden spoon, exactly as her mother and grandmother had done. And yes, her arm got tired, although she never beat anything for hours. She did use a handbeater for egg whites.
I was a teenager when I talked Dad into buying her an electric mixer, which she had resisted for several years. Once she got used to using the mixer we got cakes a lot more often.
That was in the late 1950's in southern Georgia (USA), fyi.
Cordelia Toser
Volker Bach wrote:
Am Sonntag, 15. Mai 2005 22:05 schrieb Pat:
> Hmmm, most authentic pound cake recipes do not call for any leavening other
> than a strong arm and much beating. Not so sure my Foster Mother in Law,
> Auntie Ruth ever owned an electric mixer, and her recipe did not call for
> baking soda or baking powder, just a pound of sugar, a pound of butter, a
> dozen eggs, and a pound of flour, vanilla or lemon flavoring. Butter was
> the preferred fat, but lard would do in a pinch. However, I've not seen a
> near period recipe like this.
>
You mean the ones that get their leavening by beating, beating, beating....?
That is exactly my point - the method is so time-consuming and tiring that it
must have been limited to exceptional occasions, or the tables of people who
didn't have to do it themselves.
BTW. I have traced the beaten-egg cake to the late 16th century, but it is
used for rusks.
Giano
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Message: 7
Date: Mon, 16 May 2005 16:57:39 -0400
From: "Ron Carnegie"
Subject: RE: [Sca-cooks] Medieval and/or Middle Eastern
RecipiescontainingTomatoes
To: "Cooks within the SCA"
Message-ID:
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1
Be very highly sceptical of this book! The book 1421 makes jumps in
logic that are very similiar to the Tomato argument that we have been
reading here. They may seem less apparent as he doesn't ever give the
alternative arguments. Here are some links to some of those arguments...
http://www.kenspy.com/Menzies/
http://www.dightonrock.com/refutation_to_gavin_menzies.htm
http://baheyeldin.com/pseudoscience/gavin-menzies-1421-china-discovers-the-w
orld.html
http://hnn.us/articles/1308.html
http://hnn.us/roundup/comments/3030.html
There are some pages supporting menzies "theory" as well, but they
mostly just repeat what he gives in his book.
Ranald de Balinhard,
------------------------------
Message: 8
Date: Mon, 16 May 2005 16:52:48 -0400
From:
Subject: RE: [Sca-cooks] Kitchen amusements
To: "Cooks within the SCA"
Message-ID:
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
Yum, that sounds delicious. And more fun that smelling myrrh every time you
cook.
Christianna
And now for chapter 2 in Mishaps with Margaret. The astute reader will
remember the first kitchen mishap, which involved spilling the jar of
myrrh into the stove, causing the lovely scent to fill the room every time
stovetop cooking happened.
This weekend's mishap involved the discovery that if you are making (or,
in this case, attempting to make) pomegranate syrup a la the Anonymous
Andalusian recipe, and you cook it for too long, you get pomegranate
toffee. *g*
Margaret FitzWilliam
------------------------------
Message: 9
Date: Mon, 16 May 2005 16:52:51 -0400
From:
Subject: RE: [Sca-cooks] sometimes I love this list
To: , "Cooks within the SCA"
Message-ID:
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
Well, baby, you should subscribe to the Meridian Tavern Yard for a few days
:)
The laurels are coming out in force today (I've only made it about half way
through the posts so far, but several folks have waded into the fray with
our 'yutz' (I like Phlip's term), explaining why 'chance finds' 'oral
evidence' and 'tertiary sources' won't do in convincing us that the commonly
held western beliefs are all Euro-centric Turk-bashing. He's falling back
on "I know the ways of my people, and you can't tell me any different", so
it's getting really silly now, but I have to say everyone is being
incredibly polite while trying to point out the flaws in his logic.
Christianna
-----Original Message-----
From: sca-cooks-bounces+kingstaste=mindspring.com at ansteorra.org
[mailto:sca-cooks-bounces+kingstaste=mindspring.com at ansteorra.org]On
Behalf Of Jadwiga Zajaczkowa / Jenne Heise
Sent: Sunday, May 15, 2005 10:16 PM
To: Cooks within the SCA
Subject: [Sca-cooks] sometimes I love this list
It's one of the few I'm on where there are laurels who are willing to,
and seem to see as acceptable, disagreeing with people who post nonsense
to lists.
--
-- Jadwiga Zajaczkowa, Knowledge Pika jenne at fiedlerfamily.net
"The only antidote to a shallow knowledge of history is a deeper
knowledge, the knowledge which produces not dogmatic certitude but
diagnostic skill, not clairvoyance but insight."
-- Arthur M. Schlessinger, Jr.
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End of Sca-cooks Digest, Vol 24, Issue 46
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