[Sca-cooks] Re: Indian Maize in Italy in period??????

[Ruth Frey]

> Date: Thu, 09 Nov 2000 02:47:24 +0100
> From: TG <gloning at Mailer.Uni-Marburg.DE>
> Subject: Re: SC - Corn-Early Modern
> 
> There is also a chapter on corn/maize in the herbal of Leonhard Fuchs
> 1543. He says that it is used to make bread, that it was quite 
> common in
> his time and that it was grown in many gardens ("Dise korn seind
> erstlich ... au? der Turckey in vnnser land bracht worden. Bekommen
> gern/ darumb sie nun fast gemein seind/ vnd in vilen g?rten gezilt
> werden. (...) Man macht aber au? disem korn ¸ber die massen sch?n 
wei?
> meel/ vnd becht darnach brodt darau?/ das macht leichtlich
> verstopffung"; Fuchs 1543, chap. CCCXX).
> 
> Both Bock and Fuchs have pictures.
> 
> Th.

     That's interesting -- I have a copy of Fuchs but have never got 
round to looking up his entry on maize.  I see he says maize is from 
Turkey ("This grain was first brought to our land from Turkey," loose 
translation of an above sentence).  Gerard's English _Herbal_ mentions 
maize, too, along with a harangue about how the stuff *isn't* from 
Turkey, it's from the New World ("Virginia" is the place name used, I 
think), and that the popular idea of a Turkish origin is wrong, wrong, 
wrong.  The same entry also says maize *is* edible, but with the 
caveat that it's not very nutritous and is only fit for animals, and 
unfortunate Native Americans who can't get anything better.  I have 
the Johnson edition of the _Herbal_ (Johnson re-edited the whole thing 
in 1633 or thereabouts, adding to and commenting on Gerard's original 
version), but I believe all the above info came from Gerard, which 
would put it in 1597.

                  -- Ruth