[Sca-cooks] So, just what was a Pumpion?
lilinah at earthlink.net
lilinah at earthlink.net
Sun Nov 1 20:18:55 PST 2009
'Tis the season... for this to come around again on the gee-tar:
On our local cooks list, people have been asking for both period and
non-period pumpkin recipes.
According to my limited research, the first documented written use of
the word "pumpion" was in 1526, although i don't known where.
Apparently it was first defined in the 1545 edition of Sir Thomas
Elyot's dictionary as "a kynde of Melones called Pompones"
The word itself, now "pumpkin", comes from Middle French "pompon" and
"popon", from Old French "pepon", from Latin "pepo", referring to a
kind of melon, from the Greek "pepon" meaning "ripe".
It remains unclear to me if in the 16th c. "pompion" (as i've seen it
written) refers to a melon, a round gourd, or to some New World
squash.
Helewyse has demonstrated that New World squashes were used in Italy
in the 16th century, but i don't known about elsewhere, or whether
gourds and squashes were used interchangeably, or if there was a
preference for one over the other, and which kinds of squashes were
known in Europe.
I'm sure this has come up, perhaps even recently, but i haven't been
reading the digests as carefully as usual :-( and may have skipped
over the thread.
--
Urtatim (that's err-tah-TEEM)
the persona formerly known as Anahita
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