[Sca-cooks] Penguins and potatoes was medieval dog recipes

[RON CARNEGIE]

There ya go, that is what IO was thinking of, rmember DeSilva.  Specifically 
from Morrison in fact!  I just rememebred from a game we used to play on the 
Nautical list.

Ranald

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Terry Decker" <t.d.decker at worldnet.att.net>
To: "Cooks within the SCA" <sca-cooks at ansteorra.org>
Sent: Tuesday, January 17, 2006 6:29 PM
Subject: [Sca-cooks] Penguins and potatoes was medieval dog recipes


> The island was actually in the Straits of Magellan.  To quote Drake (or 
> more probably his nephew, IIRC), "The 24 of August (1578) we arrived at an 
> island in the straits (probably Isla Isabel), where we found a great store 
> of fowl which could not fly, of the bigness of geese, whereof we killed in 
> less than one day 3,000 and victualled ourselfs thoroughly therewith." 
> (The famous voyage of Sir Francis Drake into the South Sea, and there 
> hence about the globe of the earth, begun in the year`of our Lord, 1577., 
> as taken from Haklyut)
>
> I gather from Morison, the accounts of Rev. Francis Fletcher and the 
> Potuguese pilot, Nuno da Silva, provide more detailed information. 
> Fletcher refers to the birds, "...which the Welch men call Pengwin." 
> (Welsh, "pen gwyn" or white head).  BTW, the primary rookeries are 
> actually on a couple of rocks near Isla Isabel, Santa Marta and Santa 
> Magdalena.
>
> A little later in Drake's account is a passage I find of interest.  The 
> encounter is on the 29th of Novmber 1578 on an island off the coast of 
> Chile.  "The people came down to the waterside with show of great 
> courtesy, bringing to us potatoes, roots, and two very fat sheep..."
>
> The potato Drake was familiar with was the sweet potato, often referred to 
> as the common or Spanish potato.  Given the location, the roots are very 
> likely to have been white potatoes as Chilean potatoes are the root stock 
> for most of the potatoes we use today.  As pure speculation, the encounter 
> may have set the stage for the delivery of "potatoes of Virginia" to John 
> Gerard in 1586.  The logic is Drake knew the value of white potatoes as 
> food and moved stocks of them to his ships when he resupplied after the 
> siege of Cartagena.  One the return to England, Drake's fleet rescued the 
> members of the colony at Roanoke, Virginia, and that potatoes were 
> delivered to Gerard and he mistakenly attributed them to Virginia rather 
> than Peru.  It's one of those fun debates that will probably never be 
> settled.
>
> Bear
>
>> Drakes men ate Penguins, well within our period while circumnavigatring 
>> the globe.  They were not in Antartica, they were on South America.  You 
>> have to get around the cape to do that and that is pretty far down the 
>> Southern Hemisphere.  It was actually on an island in the vicinity of the 
>> cape.
>>
>>
>> Ranald De Balinhard
>
>
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