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

[Terry Decker]

Gerard is late to the party.  Maize is first mentioned in Columbus's journal 
of rhe first voyage as a type of millet and the grain was in use in Europe 
50 years before he wrote his herbal.

The tie to Turkey is probably because the Turks were early adopters of New 
World foodstuffs, receiving them through the trade with Genoa and Venice. 
The Turks then brought such foods into Central Europe beginning with the 
incursion of 1529.  Interestingly, the term Indian causes geographical 
problems.  Columbus uses the word in relation to the West Indies, but the 
term was more generally understood to be India.  Fuchs erroneously 
identifies some capsicum peppers from the New World as being Indische 
Pfeffer and Calcuttische Pfeffer (IIRC).

Bear


>     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