[Sca-cooks] My dinner de-brief

Johnna Holloway johnnae at mac.com
Sun Jun 3 06:36:05 PDT 2012


> 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

Ok, Art, Culture, and Cuisine: Ancient and Medieval Gastronomy  By Phyllis Pray Bober talks about Carolingian foods.
She writes on page 213 that 'St. Gall relied on supplies "from only two of its distant holdings, while it could rely on imports of lemons, olives, pomegranates, and dates from allied southern brethren at the great monastery of Bobbio in Lombardy." Footnote is 34.
That reads: " Horn and Born. The Plan of St. Gall, 2:208; Sorrensen, "Garten und Pflanzen."

Johnnae




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