[Sca-cooks] cranberries
Johnna Holloway
johnnae at mac.com
Thu Oct 8 08:54:07 PDT 2009
At the risk of repeating information I just posted in August
and that is easily found in the list archives which can be searched
at http://lists.ansteorra.org/pipermail/sca-cooks-ansteorra.org/
Here's a quick summary for Cranberries Plus cowberries,
lingonberries, craneberries, lingberry, bogberries, etc.
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, *simpleleaves, *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
byGerman 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..."
Look up bilberry and you are told " bilberry /noun/ ( pl. bilberries )
a hardy dwarf shrub with red drooping flowers and dark blue edible
berries, growing on heathland and mountains in northern Eurasia. •
Genus Vaccinium , family Ericaceae: several species, in particular V.
myrtillus . • the small blue ..." Variously known as whortleberry,
blaeberry, whinberry, huckleberry"
Ayto says: "Bilberries are the small purplish-blue berries of a bush (/
Vaccinium myrtillus/) of the heath family. They are used for making
tarts, flans, sorbets, etc. The name is probably of Scandinavian
origin: Danish has the related /bøllebaer/ ‘bilberry’, of which the
first element seems to represent Danish /bolle/, ‘ball, round roll’.
Alternative names for it include /whortleberry/, (in Scotland and
northern England) /blaeberry/, and (in North America) /huckleberry/.
In French the bilberry is known as the /myrtille/ or /airelle/."
Then there are "cowberries pl. *cowberries*) a low-growing evergreen
dwarf shrub of the heather family, which bears dark red berries and
grows in northern upland habitats. See also *lingonberry which is
defined as *lingonberry* Fruit of the small evergreen shrub Vaccinium
vitis-idaea; contains high levels of *benzoic acid.Also known as
cowberry or lingberry."
All of the above comes out of Oxford Reference Online.
We've discussed this in the past so you can as always check the
Florilegium too.
Johnnae
On Oct 8, 2009, at 10:55 AM, tudorpot at gmail.com wrote:
> where cranberries known in period Europe?
>
> Theadora
More information about the Sca-cooks
mailing list