[Sca-cooks] Foods available in early Anglo Saxon England

[Stefan li Rous]

Ilsebet asked:

<<< 1) What berries (if any) would have been available?
2) Would the Romans have brought beets with them? >>>

Yes. See this file in the Florilegium FOOD-VEGETABLES section. There  
is apparently something in there about beets and the Anglo0Saxons.
beets-msg        (130K)  2/ 8/08    Period beet roots and beet  
greens. Recipes.

<<< On the other hand, if anyone knows of a foodstuff, that would  
have been
available in early Anglo-Saxon England, is pretty easily found now,  
and is
capable of dying wool sort of red/purple (we're using madder in  
another part
of the outfit, and don't have time for indigo/woad/weld, and want to  
stay
away from yellow-greens), please speak up! The dye-ing experts on the  
team
have scoured their Anglo-Saxon books to no avail, and have several  
natural
dyes books available, but they are not sure what would have been  
available
in the time/place we're trying to do. >>>

Well, it sounds like you've already consulted with the experts, but  
you might want to try the search engine in the Florilegium. Putting  
in "Anglo-Saxon" and "dyeing" turns up a number of possibilities  
including
"Blue dyes have been extracted from many Danish and Anglo- 
Scandinavian textile samples,.." in this file:
cl-Danish-11C-art (20K)  5/ 1/02    "A Reconstructed 11th Century Danish
                                        Costume" by Master Giles de  
Laval.

I seem to remember some commentary on blue dyes previously, maybe on  
this list, that says that blue berries don't always yield a blue dye.  
That, too, is probably in the Florilegium.

Stefan
--------
THLord Stefan li Rous    Barony of Bryn Gwlad    Kingdom of Ansteorra
    Mark S. Harris           Austin, Texas           
StefanliRous at austin.rr.com
**** See Stefan's Florilegium files at:  http://www.florilegium.org ****