[Sca-cooks] Rape Seed Oil, Canola Oil, and the Early Norse

Johnna Holloway johnnae at mac.com
Fri Apr 26 05:11:57 PDT 2013


I took a look at Sabine Karg's Medieval Food Traditions in Northern Europe which lists the plants from the medieval and early modern periods. (I know later than Viking, but it's the same geography and it does mention the earlier period.) I did not find rapeseed mentioned.
Probably most useful is the chapter on the Hanseatic towns Northern Poland which contains a section  on oil and fibre plants. pp.52. Flax and hemp are listed as the most important for oils. It does mention olives and olive oils being imported.

We've discussed the marketing of rapeseed in the past and the change to the more acceptable name of canola oil for a better variety, but read here

http://www.snopes.com/medical/toxins/canola.asp

Johnnae

On Apr 25, 2013, at 6:07 PM, Terri Morgan wrote:

> Recently I took part in a weekend demonstration of Viking-era Norse living
> and one of the foods that we attempted was little handpies, some heated on a
> dry 'frying pan' metal surface while others were fried in oil in a pot. For
> the deep frying, we used rape seed oil... which had me laughing at myself
> after spending nearly $17 on the can of it only to learn once I returned
> from the store that it was basically canola oil.
> Since the demo, I've wondered what sort of cooking oil would actually be
> available to the Viking-era Norse. We know that a small amount of luxury
> olive oil was imported but aside from lard - what would have been most
> commonly used? I doubt it was what we used last weekend.
> Hrothny



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