[Sca-cooks] Is Zuccnini Marrow?

K C Francis katiracook at hotmail.com
Tue Aug 25 13:31:17 PDT 2009


I have grown Zucchetta Rampicante and this year I have Zucchetta Trombolina.  They are a climbing summer squash that produces a long skinny, pale green fruit.  The seeds are only in the bulbish end.  They cook up like zucchini, but do NOT get mushy.  Mild flavor, some say artichoke like.  The picture shows a VERY large one.  I harvest them at about 10-12 inches, then chop and saute them.

 

 
 

Check out: http://www.hort.purdue.edu/newcrop/udine/90-01.html for pictures of Lagenaria siceraria (Molina) Standley var. longissima, Cucuzzi, bottle gourd, which I have also grown, but I prefer the zucchetta for my own table.

 

Katira al-Maghrebiyya

 
> Date: Fri, 21 Aug 2009 23:19:31 -0400
> From: johnnae at mac.com
> 
> 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.
> 

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