[Sca-cooks] Il famoso convito 1561

Louise Smithson helewyse at yahoo.com
Sat Dec 5 06:23:18 PST 2009


Scappi mentions broccoli and has recipes for it, but this reference is pretty much the same time period.  What I found interesting was looking at the description before the list of foods. 
Twenty four plates of salad were served to the gentles of the feast as follows (not an exact translation but a gloss):
Lettuce                             Small capers                            cooked onions
Mixed                               white chicory                            ramps
Chicory roots                     carrots                                     cooked roots
Broccoli                            Citron with sugar & rosewater     Hungarian style radish
Cauliflower
Asparagus                        raw roots (radish?)                     Split olives
roots of beet cooked          black winter radish

Now what caught my eye was the roots of beet.  The only other reference I found to beets was from much later (1620) and mentioned them as something new that was coming in from germany, most of the other references to Biete or bietole are referring to the leaves (aka swiss chard).
Book marking this one. 
Helewyse


Woah!  Something caught my eye on this.  Take a look at the page at the
URL below:

http://www.archive.org/stream/ilfamosoconvitoc00inmi#page/n18/mode/1up

At the top of the page, first column, the first two entries are
"Broccoli" and "Fiore di cauoli", which I assume are broccoli and
cauliflower.

It's nice to see them listed separately in a book printed in 1561,
especially considering how recently the myth was going around on the
internet that broccoli was invented in the 1700s by ancestors of Albert
Broccoli (producer of the Bond films).

This is one of the earliest references I've seen to broccoli.

Thanks for posting the link.

- Doc


      


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