[Sca-cooks] Roysonys of courance

[Terry Decker]

One of the things left out of most of the dictionary entries is the primary 
range for currants is in the cooler regions of the Northern Hemisphere.  The 
OED states that using currant for the fruit of the Ribes was a transferance 
that occurred after the importation of the plants into England some time 
prior to 1578.  In 1578, Lyte refers to them as "Bastard Currants" and 
"Beyond sea Gooseberries."

A pre-17th Century English recipe calling for currants or raisins of Corinth 
is most likely calling for Zante raisins.

The etymology in Old Norse might be interesting to track.  German, for 
example, uses Korinth and Johannisbeere as terms for currants.  From my 
limited knowledge, I believe Korinth would be the Zante raisin while the 
Johannisbeere is "midsummer berry" as Johanni(s) translates as "Midsummer 
Day," the Summer Solistice.

Bear

>
> 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