[Sca-cooks] watermelons

[JIMCHEVAL at aol.com]

Glad it's helpful.
 
Let me add quickly that I then went out and looked at various seventeenth  
century images of watermelon and found that there was a remarkable variety 
in  the seed dispositions. Some had clusters of clear seed cavities; others 
had  embedded seeds, but in a neat pattern; etc. So this was clearly very  
variable.
 
Of course it does mean that all the reasoning around Anthimus' use of melon 
 as possibly meaning watermelon, because he mentions eating the flesh mixed 
with  the seeds, has to be viewed under far more complex angles. The 
watermelon of his  time may no more have had seeds mixed into the flesh than the 
melons. Or  not....
 
The Cambridge history of food says plainly that watermelons go back to  
Egypt. A woman (whom I know only under a pseudonym) is finishing a book on the  
history of melons and essentially says that everything early is too 
uncertain to  make any definitive statements. (She also says that "pumpkin" was 
used to refer  to a variety of large gourds.) She's not convinced by Dalby on 
watermelon, but  thinks he's right on "cucumeres" (i.e., it was a kind of 
snake melon).
 
What we need is more ancient seeds, and some good cloning.
 
Jim  Chevallier
_www.chezjim.com_ (http://www.chezjim.com/) 

FRENCH BREAD HISTORY:  Late medieval bread
http://leslefts.blogspot.com/2015/06/french-bread-history-late-medieval-brea
d.html







In a message dated 7/29/2015 3:11:34 P.M. Pacific Daylight Time,  
StefanliRous at gmail.com writes:

An  interesting detail here is that older watermelons seem to have had seed 
  
cavities, though roughly spiral shaped. This means the seeds might not  
have 
been  embedded in the flesh as they are now.  >>>

Thank you for posting this. Wow. a lot more rind in that  medieval 
watermelon. In only 500 years. That clarifies some of the earlier  discussion on the 
‘Roman’ melon and why that description may differ from what  we think of 
as watermelon.