[Sca-cooks] Parsnips

[Elise Fleming]

Greetings! Bear wrote: "Mellita Weiss Adamson and Alan Davidson both 
state that parsnips were used for sweetening in Medieval Europe, but 
neither provides a reference to support the statement.  Davidson does 
provide a reference to Dorothy Hartley's Food in England, 1954, for a 
reference as to parsnips being used in the base for some puddings for 
the sweet flavor they impart to the honey (or at least as I understand 
the reference).  I don't have access to a copy of the work, so I haven't 
been able to verify the full reference.  Hartley's work is on 
"traditional" English cooking, so the reference may or may not be
within period."

I scanned the Hartley's 1954 pudding chapter for any mention of parsnips 
and came up with nothing. This is what she says in her section on 
Parsnips: "It was the sweet flavour of the parsnip that was so much 
liked...It often figures in sweet dishes, and the green tops were fed to 
cows as late as the nineteenth century...Also, it is the type of 
sweetness that mingles with honey and spice, so that some boiled plum 
and marrowfat puddings, flavoured with spice and sweetened with honey, 
were made with a parsnip base."

Note that Hartley says those puddings were sweetened with honey, not 
parsnips, although their sweet flavor might have contributed when used 
as a base for the plum and marrowfat puddings. Might this have been what 
was referred to?

Alys K.
-- 
Elise Fleming
alyskatharine at gmail.com
alysk at ix.netcom.com
http://damealys.medievalcookery.com/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/8311418@N08/sets/