[Sca-cooks] Is Zuccnini Marrow?

Linda Peterson mirhaxa at morktorn.com
Tue Aug 25 08:48:15 PDT 2009


So now I'm even more confused about marrows. They appear to be different 
from zucchini, and more variable in appearance. Maybe we can get Michele 
to grow some.

   mirhaxa at morktorn.com


On Fri, 21 Aug 2009, Johnna Holloway wrote:

> *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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