[Sca-cooks] olives vs. avocados

[Terry Decker]

Let's say, I think it is an olive.  It may be another fruit with which I am 
unfamiliar.  The problem is not so much with the painting as with the 
quality of reproduction.  Definition is lost in copying and reduction and if 
the printer is heavy on the ink or sloppy, you can see details that aren't 
or miss details that are.  If I were looking at the original, I might give 
yet another interpretation.

It may also be that the painter oversized the fruit to enhance the realistic 
perspective of the composition.

There are very large olives and very small avocados, but for commercial 
purposes, the reality is bite size olives and large avocados.  I've been 
looking for information on the botanical fruit sizes without much luck. 
I'll find it one of these days.

Avocados are indeed New World, but they were encountered during Cortez's 
conquest of Mexico and probably were brought to Spain by 1530.  We don't 
know much about their use in Europe, but the word appears in English around 
1697.

Bear


> Huh? How can you mistake an olive for an avocado? That sounds like an 
> awfully small avocado or an really large olive. Or was there nothing 
> nearby to figure out the scale from? Or have avocados been bred to be 
> much bigger since the Middle Ages? Where did avocados come from and  when? 
> They aren't a New World plant?
>
> Stefan