[Sca-cooks] Tudor Recipe help - the Seville Orange

[Suey]

Bear wrote:
> Unless you are doing very early Tudor, the orange could have been a sweet 
> orange.  Sweet oranges enter Mediterranean Europe via Portugal in the first 
> quarter of the 16th Century and quickly became the favorite orange of 
> Europe.  By Elizabethean times, sweet and sour oranges would have been 
> readily available.
>   
I call the Seville orange: Citrus ayrantium. Although introduced to the 
Iberian Peninsula at the end of the 15 C or the beginning of the 16th I 
question its availability in northern Europe before the 17-18C although 
it could have been common on the Med. Shakespeare does advertise it in 
Much Ado II i.204, saying "/The count is neither sad//, //nor sick//, 
//nor/ merry, /nor/ well: but civil (ciuill), /count/; civil (ciuill) as 
an orange, *.* . ."

Now would that be a bitter or sweet count??

Nola calls for "toronjas" which Brigid translates as oranges while 
others might translate it as citron. In some places she specifies sour, 
in others she indicates sour saying verjuice or orange juice or orange 
juice and sugar, still in others she says wine or orange juice making 
one think that could be sweet orange juice and in other cases there is 
no clue whether sweet or sour. Nola was published in 1529  but it is 
thought to have been written between 1470-1480.
Suey