[Sca-cooks] Spanish Pepper?
Stefan li Rous
StefanliRous at austin.rr.com
Tue Sep 13 21:29:31 PDT 2011
Alizaundre de Brebeuf related:
<<< At my annual "siege cooking" contest at Pennsic this year, one of
the
contestants included dishes spiced with "Spanish pepper" - a Capsicum
pepper, not a Piper species- which she insisted went back to Roman
times and
was ironclad-documentable to our time period. >>>
I think Frederick had the appropriate if undiplomatic answer to this.
All capsicum peppers are New World. Doesn't mean they aren't "period",
but that was not what was claimed.
I think Johnnae's hypothesis that they were thinking of long pepper is
a good explanation. But just because the Romans used something, by
itself, I think is poor evidence of something being "period" or
medieval. A lot of stuff the Romans had was not available several
hundred years later.
But these folks were insisting that this "Spanish pepper" was a
capsicum, so it wouldn't be long pepper, but perhaps they were just
mistaken on it being a capsicum. What ports was long pepper imported
through? If it was mainly through Spain/Portugal I could see it being
called a "Spanish pepper". Just as the English for the large, New
World bird is "turkey" because the English first learned of it through
the Turks.
Phlip said:
<<< He certainly deserved to
win- I was just happy I was able to help him with the "dormice in
honey" concept ;-) Brighid, they were your dormice, considering they
were made out of radishes ;-) >>>
Radishes in honey!!!? I'm not sure that that is better than dormice
in honey. :-)
<<< I still feel that the black-eyed peas were OOP. Can someone go back
over that? I think we could use turkey more easily than black-eyed
peas.>>>
We already have pretty good proof that "turkey" is period, but not
medieval. And other New World foods, in period northern Italy and Spain.
We have discussed black-eyed peas here before. I'd like to hear a
summary on them again, as well.
I will be running a New World/Old World Foods game at our demo this
Saturday. I've done this for the past few years after hearing about it
on this list. Now I have non-SCA organizers specifically asking that
we (ie me) run this game again! Apparently it has gone over well with
both children and adults and they've let the organizers know. And I
was concerned that I was boring a lot of people with my speel as I
pointed out when they chose correctly (and not) and gave facts about
various food items.
I've considered adding a can of black-eyed peas, fairly well known
here in the South, but I avoid using foods that *I'm* not sure of.
Doesn't keep me from including a can of kidney beans and one of
garbanzo beans. :-) Or a tin of "Hungarian" paprika. Or a flour
tortilla.
<<< I think we ought to tell folks what was done for that challenge ;-)
Frederich and I had a ball, and it served to get Rowan, our other
teammate, more interested in period cookery. >>>
Please do. I have several examples/stories of various siege cooking
contests in the Florilegium. More could be nice. I also have heard
very little about this past Pennsic, which unfortunately I couldn't
attend.
Stefan
--------
THLord Stefan li Rous Barony of Bryn Gwlad Kingdom of Ansteorra
Mark S. Harris Austin, Texas StefanliRous at austin.rr.com
http://www.linkedin.com/in/marksharris
**** See Stefan's Florilegium files at: http://www.florilegium.org ****
More information about the Sca-cooks
mailing list