[Sca-cooks] the oddness of ethnicity - specifically hungarianrecipe

[Huette von Ahrens]

Looking up paprika in the Oxford Companion to Food, they state that paprika was introduced into Hungary by the Bulgarians, who got them from the Turks, in 1604, according to Lang.  They also state that the paprika was very hot then.  The current paprika we have today is a product of a process formulated in 1859 that discards the seeds and most of the capsaisin and reduces the heat considerably.  

Huette

--- On Fri, 2/25/11, Terry Decker <t.d.decker at att.net> wrote:


From: Terry Decker <t.d.decker at att.net>
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] the oddness of ethnicity - specifically hungarianrecipe
To: "Cooks within the SCA" <sca-cooks at lists.ansteorra.org>
Date: Friday, February 25, 2011, 6:24 PM


Capsicum peppers are first mentioned in Columbus's journal of the first voyage.  They show up in Leonard Fuch's Herbal of 1540 and Fuchs's nomenclature connects them with the Indian sub-continent rather than the East Indies.  There is speculation that capsicum peppers came back to Spain with Columbus and were transferred from there to Italy and from there into the Ottoman Empire.  It is generally believed that the Ottomans brought them (in particular paprika) into Central Europe as early as the incursion of 1526, but the actual date could be well into the 17th Century.  Trager gives 1529 as the date paprika peppers were planted in Buda, but he is a highly questionable source.  To my knowledge there are no recipes or evidence to prove use in Europe before 1600.

The peppers known in Europe before 1600 appear to be Capsicum frutescens, while bell peppers are C. annum and don't seem to put in an appearance.

Bear


> are bell peppers non-period, too?
> and you're saying paprika isn't period, either?  hmmm.....darn, I like
> paprika
> 
> On Wed, Feb 23, 2011 at 2:42 PM, Ian Kusz <sprucebranch at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>> Speaking of which, someone suggested this to me as a healthy food; is it
>> period, is it tasty, and is it healthy?  Anyone tried to make?  Is it a
>> touchy dish, or easy?
>> 
>> 
>> --
>> Ian of Oertha


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