[Sca-cooks] Roysonys of courance

[Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius]

On Mar 2, 2006, at 9:59 PM, Daniel Phelps wrote:

> Was written:
>
> Seriously, though, we can be pretty certain that a period English
> recipe calling for raisins of Courance is referring to dried grapes
> of the little variety found on some Mediterranean islands like
> Corinth and Zante.
>
> Okay lests we not see what it obvious, i.e. the forest for the trees
>
> roysonys of courance
> raisins of Corinth
>
> Hmmm... raysonys are raisins  could courance be Corinth?
>
> Did this get noted in a previous post that I missed?

I didn't specifically mention it, but I may have been remiss in not  
stating something I thought was, if not obvious, at least highly  
likely. What I did was to use them fairly interchangeably, though.

FWIW, I found this in Apple's Webster's Dictionary application that  
comes bundled with recent versions of OS X (I have an edition of the  
OED on disk, but it would require rebooting to get at it):

currant |ˈkərənt; ˈkə-rənt| |ˌkərənt| |ˌkʌr(ə)nt|
noun
1 a small dried fruit made from a seedless variety of grape  
originally grown in the eastern Mediterranean region, now widely  
produced in California, and much used in cooking : [as adj. ] a  
currant bun.
2 a Eurasian shrub that produces small edible black, red, or white  
berries. • Genus Ribes, family Grossulariaceae: numerous species,  
including black currant and red currant.
• a berry from such a shrub.
ORIGIN Middle English raisons of Corauntz, translating Anglo-Norman  
French raisins de Corauntz ‘grapes of Corinth ’ (the original  
source).


This doesn't state with much clarity that the etymology of the term  
"currant" as it applies to the red and black berries derives from the  
little dried Mediterranean grape, but it seems evident that that is  
the case. I then have to wonder what the berries were called in  
England before the little dried grape was a common import item.

Ah, well, Anne Hagen just became bedtime reading, I guess...

Adamantius







"S'ils n'ont pas de pain, vous fait-on dire, qu'ils  mangent de la  
brioche!" / "If there's no bread to be had, one has to say, let them  
eat cake!"
     -- attributed to an unnamed noblewoman by Jean-Jacques Rousseau,  
"Confessions", 1782

"Why don't they get new jobs if they're unhappy -- or go on Prozac?"
     -- Susan Sheybani, assistant to Bush campaign spokesman Terry  
Holt, 07/29/04