[Sca-cooks] Clove defined and symbolism

[Christiane]

<snippage>
>I can certainly see how using the flowers is a nice alternative, and possibly one pursued in period. I just don't see how it's demonstrably a better interpretation.
>
>Adamantius

I'm actually agreeing with you. :-)I think the interpretation of the use of the flower is from modern cooks familiar with the use of clove gillyflowers in Elizabethan and Jacobean cooking, and therefore because of that knowledge always interpreting the phrase "clowe gilofer" as the the flower, not the spice.

And was cherry pottage actually made by Elizabethan and Jacobean cooks for noble patrons? It could have fallen out of fashion by then (though rural families and gentry might have kept making it, though they might not have been able to afford the cloves). Does anyone know if it was on any English feast menus of later periods?

Incidentally, my father is highly allergic to cloves. Not anaphylactic shock allergic, but they produce unpleasant results. He always has to inquire if a baked ham was studded with cloves before partaking of it.

YIS,
Adelisa di Salerno