[Sca-cooks] Cranberries was Twill weaves and garb,

[Judith Epstein]

So, shorthanding this... I can use cranberries in Period cooking,  
provided I can find documentation for a recipe using marshwort,  
fenwort, fenberry, or mossberry?

On Aug 25, 2009, at 8:54 PM, Johnna Holloway wrote:

> And why do you think they didn't have a form of cranberry in the Old
> World???
>
> You see this is a trick question.
>
> Genus /Vaccinium/, family Ericaceae: several species.
>
> If you look under
> "Vaccinium" /A Dictionary of Plant Sciences/. Michael Allaby. Oxford
> University Press, 2006. /Oxford Reference Online/.
> you will find this entry:
>
> "Vaccinium/* (bilberry; family *Ericaceae
> A genus of mostly low shrubs, often evergreen, with alternate,  
> *simple leaves, *tetra-  or *pentamerous  flowers with mostly bell-  
> or urn shaped *corollas  and *inferior  *ovaries, and *berry-like  
> fruits. There are some 450 species, found mostly in the northern  
> (temperate zone and the Arctic, with some tropical mountain  
> outliers. Several species are cultivated, particularly the American  
> cranberry (V. macrocarpon), with reflexed corolla lobes, from whose  
> berries cranberry sauce is made; European cranberry (V. oxycoccos)  
> is a similar but smaller species, also with edible berries, found in  
> bogs throughout the northern temperate zone."
>
> • /Vaccinium vitis-idaea/, family Ericaceae. • the edible acid berry  
> of the cowberry plant.
>
> If you look under "cranberry" /An A-Z of Food and Drink/. Ed. John  
> Ayto. OUP, 2002 /Oxford Reference Online/ you will find:
> "Cranberries grow in Britain, but in medieval times they went under  
> a variety of names such as /marsh-wort, fen-wort, fen-berry/, and / 
> moss-berry/. The term /cranberry/ did not appear until the late  
> seventeenth century, in America. It was a partial translation of / 
> kranbeere/, literally ‘craneberry,’ brought across the Atlantic by  
> German immigrants (the German word is an allusion to the plant's  
> long beaklike stamens). It was the Germans and Scandinavians, too,  
> who probably popularized the notion of eating cranberries with  
> meat..."