[Sca-cooks] amchur and ajwain

Sharon Palmer ranvaig at columbus.rr.com
Tue Jun 4 16:41:53 PDT 2013


At 5:57 PM -0500 6/4/13, Stefan li Rous wrote:
>Were these spices used in period? Just in India? Or did they make it 
>to Europe? My assumption for the latter, particularly on the amchur 
>is most likely not. I'm not sure that dried mango, as a souring 
>agent, would be worth transporting as far as Europe, not when other 
>things like pepper and other spices would seem to be more lucrative.

Some of that is answered in the links that Bear posted.  Gernot 
Katzer's site should be the first place to check for information 
about any spice.

At 2:40 PM -0500 6/2/13, Terry Decker wrote:
>Ajwain  -  http://gernot-katzers-spice-pages.com/engl/Trac_cop.html
>
>Amchoor (Amchur) -  http://gernot-katzers-spice-pages.com/engl/Mang_ind.html

According to the site ajwain originates in the Eastern Mediterranean, 
maybe Egypt
Another name is Carom and they are sometimes called Lovage seed, even 
though they do not come from the same plant.  It's used as a 
digestive, so it might be worth checking for it in medicinal texts.

"There is speculation whether a plant mentioned in the Capitulare de 
villis (see lovage) of Charlemagne might be ajwain; I think this is 
quite improbable, although I found out by experiment that ajwain can 
be grown in Central European climate. "

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carom_seeds


I'd agree that amchur is unlikely to be used in period in Europe. 
Mangos are only known very late in period, and will not grow in 
Europe.

"It is, though, surprising and not much known that the unripe fruit 
gives a remarkable spice much used in Northern India (but, to my 
knowledge, nowhere else)."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mango

"By the 10th century AD, cultivation had begun in East Africa. The 
14th century Moroccan traveler, Ibn Battuta, reported it at Mogadishu.

The word's first recorded attestation in a European language was a 
text by Ludovico di Varthema in Italian in 1510, as manga; the first 
recorded occurrences in languages such as French and post-classical 
Latin appear to be translations from this Italian text."

Ranvaig



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