[Sca-cooks] Recipe to cure leprosy

[James Prescott]

Rumpolt 1581 has 67) Borrago Wein, the translation says "... takes away 
many fantasies for ... leprosy."  So it's not clear exactly what the 
recipe does.  It might not cure leprosy, but it does something beneficial.

Eberhard c. 1425 says (in the translation) "Nobody should eat milk and 
fish at the same time as this causes leprosy."


No period reference that I have found so far for potatoes causing 
leprosy, except possibly Caspar Bauhin (1596 or 1598), who is reported 
to have "... gossiped that potatoes caused wind and leprosy ...". 
However, it certainly was not a factor against early adoption, since we 
have many references to people in Europe happily growing and eating 
potatoes in the second half of the 1500s.


The potato is period in Europe.  The earliest ironclad evidence so far 
is a record that potatoes were shipped from the Canary Islands to 
Antwerp in 1567 (same source that Bear lists, though he has the date and 
destination incorrect) (earlier reference Lobo-Cabrera, 1988).

While not completely ironclad, I conclude that the four recipes in 
Ouverture refer to the potato, and if so they give a date for potatoes 
being eaten in Europe in 1557.

There are other less solid references to the potato being in parts of 
Italy in the 1560s, and being in parts of France in the 1540s.  There is 
speculation (which I do not agree with) that a recipe in Rumpolt 1581 
refers to the potato.

Thorvald


On 2015-10-12, 13:57, Terry Decker wrote:
> White potatoes were under cultivation in the Canary Islands before 1569
> and were exported to Amsterdam. (Hawkes & Francisco-Ortega, 1993)
>
> The idea that potatoes caused leprosy doesn't show up in any of the
> period texts I've reviewed. It may be a piece of 18th Century folklore.
>
> Bear
>
> -----Original Message----- From: Susan Lord
> Sent: Monday, October 12, 2015 9:30 AM
> To: sca-cooks at lists.ansteorra.org
> Subject: [Sca-cooks] Recipe to cure leprosy
>
> Do we have a medieval recipe to supposedly cured leprosy? I have read
> that black snake soup was one but know not where that recipe might be.
> Also, I have read that potatoes were first thought to cause leprosy but
> they are not in period.
>
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