[Sca-cooks] Redaction exercise

[Susan Lord Williams]

Ana wrote:
> 
> 
> On 3/8/14, 11:47 AM, Ana Vald?s 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

It should be noted that Spain and Austria were not united except under Charles I of Spain and Vth of the Holy Roman Empire. When he voluntarily retired the empire in 1556, the empire was divided between Philip II, his Spanish heir and Ferdinand, his brother and heir of Austria when Charles voluntarily retired in 1556. Actually, he was technically only sort of the king of Spain until his mother’s death in 1555 - it was a joint reign  - first his grandmother died and then his grandfather so first his mother became queen of Castile and then when father died, queen of Aragon . . .. 

I have no knowledge of Toledo adapting American products during the life time of Columbus. There is talk of tomatoe plants used as decoration but not eaten until several decades later. 

Anise is called for as an ingredient 8 times in Perry’s translation of 13th C Al-Andalus recipes. I have no mention of vanilla in any of the Spanish medieval recipes in my possession to date. 

Susan
>> 
>> 
>> 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