[Sca-cooks] Redaction exercise

[prescotj]

Writing of possibilities:

The current earliest iron-clad reference to potatoes in Europe is 1567, the potatoes being shipped from the Canaries to Antwerp.  The Netherlands were then under Spanish/Habsburg control, with a number of the governors being Austrian.  This gives an example of a *possible* quick route, via the Netherlands, from Spanish territory to Austria.

This is not direct evidence.  It does demonstrate that the effective 'distance' for chocolate or vanilla could be much faster than would appear simply by looking at a map.


Thorvald

----- David Friedman <ddfr at daviddfriedman.com> wrote:
> Do they have period references to vanilla that early? Trade invoices, 
> recipes, ...?
> 
> Do we have evidence for other things that showed up early in Spain, such 
> as chocolate, also showing up early in Austria?
> 
> On 3/8/14, 11:47 AM, Ana Valdés wrote:
> > I asked my Swedish friends, they said Linneus tried to grow vanilla in
> > Sweden but he never succeded. According to them vanillan come to Gotland
> > through German traders and they got it from Spain, after 1502. Spain and
> > Austria was the same empire for several centuries and I guess the
> > discoveries from Columbus come at the same time to Toledo, the imperial
> > capital then, and to Vienna.
> > When we talked about the 16th century I was speaking about 1530 or 40, the
> > peak for Gotland.
> > Ana
> >
> >
> > On Sat, Mar 8, 2014 at 2:50 PM, TerryDecker <t.d.decker at att.net> wrote:
> >
> >> The pancakes may be Medieval, but the vanilla in them certainly is not.
> >> Vanilla beans enter Europe no earlier than 1519 and the Spanish began
> >> importing them for culinary purposes only in the latter half of the 16th
> >> Century.
> >> They were very scarce and truly expensive until 1839 when the method of
> >> hand pollination was discovered and the cultivation of vanilla spread out
> >> of Mexico to other tropical areas.  The production of vanilla extract (the
> >> most common method of using vanilla) is also a 19th Century process.
> >>   Unless there is a documentable recipe dating to the 16th Century, the odds
> >> are vanilla is a late addition to the recipe.  I do have a recipe for a
> >> kind of cake where the whole bean is used, but it appears to only date from
> >> the late 18th Century.
> >>
> >> Anise (Pimpinella anisum) is an Eastern Mediterranean plant used since
> >> Antiquity, so it was probably available.  Star anise (Illicium verum) is a
> >> plant of Southeast Asia.  Since star anise is primarily used a less
> >> expensive replacement for anise and it only begins appearing in European
> >> recipes in the 17th Century (according to the work of Jill Norman).  Its
> >> entry into Europe is probably due to Ottoman control of the anise trade and
> >> European expansion into Asia.
> >>
> >> Bear
> >>
> >>
> >> -----Original Message-----
> >> Johnna I lived in Gotland in the Baltic Sea in Sweden one year and the
> >> island was a part of the Hansa League ruled by the German cities. They took
> >> to Visby, in Gotland, anise, star anise and vanilla. Gotland is the only
> >> place in Sweden you can eat vanilla pancakes, the islands speciality,
> >> direct from the Middle Ages.
> >> Ana
> >>
> >>
> >> _______________________________________________
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> >>
> >
> >
> 
> -- 
> David Friedman
> www.daviddfriedman.com
> http://daviddfriedman.blogspot.com/
> 
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