[Sca-cooks] Plantains: Period for Old World?

David Friedman ddfr at daviddfriedman.com
Tue Sep 1 13:46:53 PDT 2009


I don't believe I have seen any period recipes using plantains. 
Al-Warraq has a banana recipe that I'm tempted to try at our next 
cooking workshop, and it's conceivable that he might use the same 
word for  bananas and plantains--it's a desert, bananas layered with 
thin flatbread and sugar, drenched with rosewater, and baked 
underneath a chicken (to get the drippings).

The Four Seasons of the House of Cerruti (14th c. Italian) has a 
reference to bananas and a picture. It's clear that neither the 
author of the text, which is itself based on a much earlier Arabic 
text, nor the artist has ever seen one. The text does say that they 
are known in Sicily, however (as well as Cyprus and the Holy Land).
-- 
David/Cariadoc
www.daviddfriedman.com



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