[Sca-cooks] Is Zuccnini Marrow?

[Johnna Holloway]

*zucchini* so named for Ital., pl. of /zucchino/ (small) marrow, dim. of 
/zucca/ gourd. ]

*are known in the United Kingdom as * Courgettes. Also const. as sing.

*Zucchini is t*he usual word for the vegetable in N. America and 
Australia. OED only dates it back to 1929.

John Ato writes "*zucchini* /Zucchini/ is the usual term in American and 
Australian English for /courgettes/, to which it is etymologically 
related. It is a direct borrowing of Italian /zucchini/, the plural of 
/zucchino/, ‘courgette’, which is a diminutive form of /zucca/, ‘gourd’. 
This came from Latin /cucutia/, a by-form of /cucurbita/, source of 
French /courge/, ‘gourd’ (of which /courgette/ is a diminutive)."

(You can do an image search on Google and compare the produce to the 
names. It's quite easy to see the differences between the vegetable 
marrows and zucchini.)

Zucchini, as grown in the USA today, are summer squash and would have 
come to the Old World after 1492.
What was already in the Old World was "The white-flowering /zucca 
rampicante/ (vining gourd) or /zucca a tromba/ (trumpet gourd) is an Old 
World cucurbit (/Lagenaria siceraria/) that has been grown in the 
Mediterranean region since ancient times. The edible baby gourds, shown 
here, were known as /zucchette/ or /zucchini/ in Italian and were the 
breeding model for the New World squash grown today under the name of 
zucchini." The squash bore a resemblance to other cucurbits known to the 
Romans, although they belonged to other plant species. It received the 
name of /calabash/ and a false identity as /zucco/ from Syria. From this 
comes its present-day name, zucchini.
See Maynard, David and Donald N. Maynard. "Squash and Gourds." 
_Encyclopedia of Food and Culture_.

What we have discovered in the past and been over a number of times on 
the list is that the wording in various books is not precise when it 
comes to the marrows, squashes, and gourds.
There are pages and pages of posts on this topic in the Florilegium.

The best guess is that the zucchini type of squashes substituted in for 
an earlier white flowered gourd.
The easy way to search for gourd recipes from period texts is to go to 
http://www.medievalcookery.com/cgi/booksearch.pl
and search under gourd.

Johnnae

wyldrose wrote:
> Am correct that Zuccinni is marrow and if so how about a few some what 
> period recipes for using it up?
> Kay
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