[Sca-cooks] Substitute for Potatoes?

[David Friedman]

>On Aug 23, 2009, at 11:13 PM, Solveig Throndardottir wrote:
>
>>Noble Cousin!
>>
>>Greetings from Solveig! Potatoes are from Peru. However, there are 
>>a number of old world tubers available such as yams Dioscorea 
>>species which originated in West Africa and Asia.
>>
>>Your Humble Servant
>>Solveig Throndardottir
>>Amateur Scholar
>
>Yes, and I fully intend to use yams in my Period cooking.

Off hand, I can't think of any recipes in either the period European 
or Islamic corpus that use them. I don't even know if there is any 
evidence that they were used in the  parts of the world from which we 
have surviving cookbooks.

You might want to check the Rehla of Ibn Battuta for references--he 
visited both east and west Africa in the 14th century.
-- 
David/Cariadoc
www.daviddfriedman.com