[Sca-cooks] Spanish Pepper?

[Terry Decker]

> Matthioli:
>
>
> Note this "Indian or Calcutta" pepper image as well:
> http://imgbase-scd-ulp.u-strasbg.fr/displayimage.php?album=28&pos=380
> contrast to the "ordinary" pepper here:
> http://imgbase-scd-ulp.u-strasbg.fr/displayimage.php?album=28&pos=382
>

The earliest reference I have found for capsicums in Europe was Fuchs Herbal 
(1541).  He also refers to Indian and Calcutta peppers and I am fairly 
certain that the nomenclature was a misunderstanding of the West Indian 
origin of the capsicum.  Since the original Italian Mattioli Herbal was 
published in 1544, it is highly likely that Mattioli was copying Fuchs.

> Ryff:
>
> http://daten.digitale-sammlungen.de/bsb00029507/image_554
>
> Ryff says that these "Smilax Hortensis" are "Welsh" beans and that
> translates to "Italian".  He remarks they are also known as Phaselen and
> that they are new to German lands.  They grow in a hop-like vine manner
> and the beans from the pod are kidney shaped and come in several colors:
> snow white, brown, red, black, yellow, speckled.  He says that despite the
> recency of introduction, they are now common in Germany.
>
> It makes me wonder if new world beans had spread after introduction as a
> garden plant and were given the same description?
>
> Katherine

Rather than "Welsh beans," it is "Welsch Bo:nen" (foreign beans) one finds 
in Fuchs.  The term is also used by Targus (1552) for P. vulgaris, which was 
a foreign import from Italy.

For a little more on black-eyed peas, the spread of beans, the nomenclature 
and just for fun, let's quote Sturtevant, Edible Plants of the World, 1919:

"The mention of beans in Mexico is frequent. The Olmecs raised beans before 
the time of the Toltecs; beans were a product of the Nahua tillage; they are 
mentioned by Acosta in 1590; Alarcon speaks of their culture by the Indians 
of the Colorado River in 1758. The native Mexican name was ayacotle, 
according to Humboldt, and Bancroft says that they were the etl of the 
Aztecs; when boiled in the pod exotl.

In November, 1492, Columbus, in Cuba, found "a sort of bean" or "fields 
planted with faxones and habas very different from those of Spain;" and red 
and white beans were afterwards seen by him in Honduras, according to 
Pickering. Gray and Trumbull quote Oviedo as saying that on the island and 
on the main many bushels are produced yearly of these and of Jesoles of 
other sorts and different colors. The Indians of Peru, according to de la 
Vega, had three or four kinds of beans called purutu. Squier found lima 
beans in the mummy covering of a woman from the huaca at Pachacamac, Peru; 
Wittmack, who studied the beans brought from Peruvian tombs by Reiss and 
Strobel, identified the lima beans and also three kidney beans with P. 
vulgaris purpurens Martens, P. vulgaris ellipticus praecox Alefield, and P. 
vulgaris ellipticus atrofuscus Alefield.

In Chile, Molina says that before the country was conquered by the 
Spaniards, 13 or 14 kinds of the bean, varying but little from the common 
European bean, were cultivated by the natives. One of these has a straight 
stalk, the other 13 are climbers.

Commentators have quite generally considered P. vulgaris as among the plants 
cultivated by the ancients, and De Candolle, who has given the subject much 
thought, thinks the best argument is in the use of the modem names derived 
from the Greek fasiolos and the Roman faseolus and phasiolus. In 1542, 
Fuchsius used the German word Faselen for the bean; in 1550, Roeszlin used 
the same word for the pea, as did also Tragus in 1552. Fuchsius gives also 
an alternative name, welsch Bonen and Roeszlin, welsch Bonen and welsch 
Phaselen for the bean; the same word, welsch Bonen, is given for the bean by 
Tragus, 1552, and Kyber, 1553. This epithet, welsch or foreign, would seem 
to apply to a kind not heretofore known. Albertus Magnus, who lived in the 
thirteenth century, used the word faselus as denoting a specific plant; as 
"faba et faseolus et pisa et alia genera eguminis," "cicer, fava, faseolus." 
He also says, "Et sunt faseoli multorum colorum, sed quodlibet granorum 
habet maculam nigram in loco cotyledonis." Now Dolichos unguiculatus Linn. 
is a plant which produces beans with a black eye (the black eye appears in 
many varieties of cowpea of the southern states) and is stated by Vilmorin 
to be grown in Italy in many varieties. Of 219 bottles of true beans, each 
with a distinct name, many, however, synonyms, not one has a black eye. The 
seeds of Dolichos unguiculatus, as well as 12 named varieties of cowpea all 
have a circle of black about the white eye, also one variety of cowpea which 
is all black has a white eye, and one red-speckled form does not have the 
black. It seems, therefore, reasonable to conclude that the faselus of 
Albertus Magnus was a Dolichos. In the list of vegetables Charlemagne 
ordained to be planted on his estates the word fasiolum occurs without 
explanation.

Passing now to the Roman writers, Columella speaks of longa fasellus, an 
epithet which well applies to the pods of the Dolichos; he gives directions 
for field culture, not for garden culture, and recommends planting in 
October. Pliny says the pods are eaten with the seed, and the planting is in 
October and November. Palladius recommends the planting of faselus in 
September and October, in a fertile and well-tilled soil, four modii per 
jugerum. Virgil's epithet, vilemque phaselum, also indicates field culture, 
as to be cheap implies abundance.

Among the Greek writers, Aetius, in the fourth century, says the Dolichos 
and the Phaseolus of the ancients were now called by all lobos, and by some 
melax kepea. This word lobos of Aetius is recognizable in the Arabic loubia, 
applied to Dolichos lubia Forsk., a bean with low stalks, the seed ovoid, 
white, with a black point at the eye. From these and other clues to be 
gleaned here and there from the Greek authors, one is disposed to think that 
the low bean of the ancients was a Dolichos, and that the word phaselus 
referred to this bean whenever used throughout the Middle Ages in speaking 
of a field crop.

The Roman references to Phaseolus all refer to a low-growing bean fitted for 
field culture and so used. There is no clear indication to be found of 
garden culture. Aetius seems the first among the Greeks to refer to a garden 
sort, for he says the lobos are the only kind in which the pod is eaten with 
the bean; and, he says, this lobos is called by some melax kepea (Smilax 
hortensis), the Dolichos and Phaseolus of his predecessors. Galen's use of 
the word lobos, or the pod plant, would hence imply garden culture in Greece 
in the second century.

The word loubion is applied by the modem Greeks to Phaseolus vulgaris, as is 
also the word loba in Hindustani. The word lubia is used by the Berbers, and 
in Spain the form alubia, for Phaseolus vulgaris. The words fagiuolo in 
Italian, phaseole in French, are also used for this species. It is so easy 
for a name used in a specific sense to remain while the forms change, as is 
illustrated by the word squash in America, that we may interpret these names 
to refer to the common form of their time, to a Dolichos (even, now in some 
of its varieties called a bean) in ancient times and to a Phaseolus now.

Theophrastus says the dolichos is a climber, bears seeds and is not a 
desirable vegetable. The word dolichos seems to be used in a generic sense. 
There is no other mention of a climber by the ancient authors. The dolichos 
of Galen is the faselus of the Latins for he says that some friends of his 
had seen the dolichos (a name not then introduced in Rome) growing in fields 
about Caria, in Italy. We may, therefore, be reasonably certain that the 
pole beans which were so common in, the sixteenth century were not then 
cultivated.

The English name, kidney beans, is derived, evidently, from the shape of the 
seed. Turner, 1551, uses the name first, but these beans were not generally 
grown in England until quite recent times. Parkinson, 1629, speaks of them 
as oftener on rich men's tables; and Worlidge, 1683, says that within the 
memory of man they were a great rarity, although now a common, delicate 
food. The French word haricot, applied to this plant, occurs in Quintyne, 
1693, who calls them aricos in one place, and haricauts in another. The word 
does not occur in Le Jardinier Solitaire, 1612, and Champlain, 1605, uses 
the term febues du Bresil, indicating he knew no vernacular name of closer 
application. De Candolle says the word araco is Italian and was originally 
used for Lathyrus ochrus; it is apparently thus used by Oribasius and 
Galen."

Bear