[Sca-cooks] Blancmange

Terry Decker t.d.decker at worldnet.att.net
Tue Jul 3 21:42:13 PDT 2007


 Sugar I question
> Spaniards took cane so we must allow a few years for crops to produce.

Columbus introduced sugar into the New World on his second voyage and it 
quickly spread and became a major crop in the Caribbean.  Rice, according to 
Roger Owen, took a couple centuries to catch on in the New World.

> Thank you so much. But my main query with you is what is your
> reference that blancmange came from Arab origin and from Spain entered
> Europe? My question elsewhere is could it have had a Roman or even Greek
> origin?

Probably not.  While the Greeks and Romans knew about sugar and rice, sugar 
was so rare and expensive that it was used only as medicine while the only 
rice import of note was rice wine.  Platina relates one of Martino's 
blancmange recipes to a recipe in Apicius, but Martino never acknowledged 
Apicius as a source and no existing copy of Apicius has a recipe for 
blancmange.

>    Almonds seem to be something we always had in Spain and the Med
> region so I suppose we took them to the Americas and we must to leave
> time for growth before we can use them there. . .
>    You know my friends we have the basic ingredients for this dish in
> Syria, Egypt and of course Baghdad but it does not seem that "Knights"
> had it as Perry does not mention it there . So where does this come
> from? In my book it is not from Provence as per Calero's interpretation
> of Villena! We could have it in the 8th century before or after,
> somewhere, no????
> Suey

Almonds seem to start appearing in the New World around the 17th Century.

Bear 




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