[Sca-cooks] Question about watermelon...

[Ariane Helou]

So, this is my favorite period description of a watermelon...at least I 
assume it's a watermelon:

"Also they have another excellent fruit called Anguria, the coldest fruit 
in taste that ever I did eate: the pith of it, which is in the middle, is 
as redde as blood, and full of blacke kernels.  They find a notable 
commodity of it in the sommer, for the cooling of themselves in time of 
heate.  For it hath the most refrigerating virtue of all the fruites of 
Italy."

 From Thomas Coryate's "Crudities," the travel journal of an Englishman's 
tour through France, Italy, and Germany.  It was published in 1611, but 
posthumously; Coryate died in 1607, and I think his travels took place a 
few years earlier than that.  This excerpt and the following are from his 
section on Venetian food markets.  Here's what he has to say about other 
melons:

"Likewise they had another speciall commodity when I was there, which is 
one of the most delectable dishes for a Sommer fruite of all Christendome, 
namely muske Melons.  I wondred at the plenty of them; for there was such 
store brought into the citie every morning and evening for the space of a 
moneth together, that not onely St. Markes place, but also all the market 
places of the citie were superabundantly furnished with them: insomuch that 
I thinke there were sold so many of them every day for that space, as 
yeelded five hundred pound sterling.  They are of three sorts, yellow, 
greene, and redde, but the red is most toothsome of all."

Finally, a warning to the greedy:

"But I advise thee (gentle Reader) if thou meanest to see Venice, and shalt 
happen to be there in the sommer time when they are ripe, to abstaine from 
the immoderate eating of them.  For the sweetnesse of them is such as hath 
allured many men to eate so immoderately of them, that they have therewith 
hastened their untimely death."


Vittoria