[Sca-cooks] Early Period varieties of vegetables

[Tre]

Here's the link I was reading most recently. http://www.carrotmuseum.co.uk/history.html

Throughout the Medieval writings, carrots are confused with parsnips. When 
Linnaeus created scientific names, he called carrots Daucus carota parsnips 
Pastinaca sativa, so the two are clearly different. Before Linnaeus, however, 
Pastinaca sativa was used for both plants.  
Fuchs in 1542 described red and yellow garden carrots and wild carrots, but 
names them all Pastinaca (Meyer Trueblood and Heller1999).  
Gerard (1633) uses the English name carrot, but calls it Pastinaca in Latin: 
Pastinaca sativa var. tenuifolia, the yellow carrot and Pastinaca sativa 
atro-rubens, the red carrot. Gerard distinguishes parsnips from carrots and 
calling the parsnip Pastinaca latifolia sativa and P. latifolia sylvestris. 
Gerard notes the name similarity and is dissatisfied with it. He gives daucus as 
a name for carrot in Galen, but notes that many Roman writers called it 
pastinaca or other names.  
The plants were not confused on purpose, but since we have in many cases only 
the written word, if the Medieval writer referred to "pastinaca", it is 
impossible to know if they were carrots or parsnips. 


I can't seem to find the section I was reading about small white, woody carrots and small white, woody parsnips which seemed similar in period, but have been bread to be very different. That may have been on another website.




________________________________
 From: David Walddon <david at vastrepast.com>
To: Tre <trekatz at yahoo.com>; Cooks within the SCA <sca-cooks at lists.ansteorra.org> 
Cc: Terry Decker <t.d.decker at att.net> 
Sent: Thursday, April 26, 2012 5:16 AM
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Early Period varieties of vegetables
 

I am interested in your parsnip research. 
There are recipes in De Honesta (the first five books not the last that are Martino) that uses parsnips or carrots. Very good recipes - one par-boiled rolled in "meal" and deep fried the other stewed with lettuce a spices. You could check out the journal article in PPC. 
Eduardo 


Maestro Eduardo Francesco Maria Lucrezia, O.L., O.P. Barone del Corte di AnTir

David Walddon
david at vastrepast.com
www.vastrepast.net


On Apr 25, 2012, at 9:07 PM, Tre wrote:

Hmm...thanks. I may rethink the purple carrots then, and just use parsnips instead, as part of my research is showing that carrots and parsnips were almost interchangeable for a while, since they were very similar. I'll do further research first, though, as I keep finding conflicting information. (Currently I'm looking up information specifically on the history of carrots.)
>
>Thanks for the guess about the onions, too. I may try using shallots. I may actually be able to find something close to a wild onion, though. A yellow onion, though, seems to be the flavor I'm looking for.
>
>If head cabbages were available...what KIND of head cabbage? I've found pointy ones, round ones, and ones with dark, veiny leaves... and the red ones. It's the same problem I have with onions. "Cabbage" is a wide term, and the flavors and textures vary greatly.
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>________________________________
>From: Terry Decker <t.d.decker at att.net>
>To: Tre <trekatz at yahoo.com>; Cooks within the SCA <sca-cooks at lists.ansteorra.org> 
>Sent: Wednesday, April 25, 2012 10:32 PM
>Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Early Period varieties of vegetables
>
>Purple carrots are an Asiatic varietal and are wrong for Viking/Anglo-Saxon. The European carrot of the day was the white carrot, Queen Anne's Lace. Colored carrots enter Europe from Spain several hundred years after.
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>For onion, I would suggest a small yellow, as wild onions are near impossible to find, or shallots.  Don't worry too much about varieties.
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>Kale is fine, but head cabbages were also available.
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>For digging out the information try starting with:  The Cambridge World History of Food, The Oxford Companion to Food, and Pliny's Natural Histories.
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>Bear
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>I looked in the florilegium and didn't see anything...but I may have missed it.
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>I'm trying to find varieties of several vegetables that would be at least close to the viking/anglo-saxon varieties.
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>I already found a source for purple carrots, so plan to use those.
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>I'm looking at Cabbage, and thinking of possibly using kale instead of modern cabbage, as some of what I'm seeing says that early cabbage was more leafy and less head.
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>I know several of my recipes call specifically for leeks, and that isn't a problem, but other recipes call for onions, and I was wondering what variety might be closest to what was available.
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>Has anyone done research into this, or have any ideas as to where I could find the information?
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