[Sca-cooks] My dinner de-brief

Johnna Holloway johnnae at mac.com
Sun Jun 3 06:12:23 PDT 2012


Oddly enough Food Culture in France by Julia Abramson contains a passage on
the Carolingian Renewal. On page 10 there is this sentence in that section:

"Spices were available, and the diet included imports such as lemons and dates."

Johnnae

On Jun 3, 2012, at 3:44 AM, Laura C. Minnick wrote:

> On 6/2/2012 10:04 PM, David Friedman wrote:
>> 
>> Where are you imagining the feast happening? Lemons might have been available in Italy, but I'm not sure how much farther north. Wikipedia claims that lemons entered Europe no later than the 1st century AD, but were not widely cultivated, and that  " The first substantial cultivation of lemons in Europe began in Genoa in the middle of the 15th century."
>> 
> Lemons travel pretty well, and in my time period the Franks had control of Lombardy, which extended quite a ways into Italy. I'm also looking to citrus on the Iberian peninsula, but that is sketchier- the Saracens weren't exactly fans of Charles and I don't know how much trade there was with them, if any.
> snip
> Liutgard


More information about the Sca-cooks mailing list