[Sca-cooks] taro, ginger beer etc.

[Alec Story]

Some earlier texts mention the character for taro as well:
http://ctext.org/pre-qin-and-han?searchu=%E8%8A%8B, possibly going back as
far as the Warring States period of 468-300 BC, but I'm not as confident
those are referring to the same plant.

On Tue, Feb 14, 2017 at 1:41 PM, Alec Story <avs38 at cornell.edu> wrote:

> I can at least support taro in China in late antiquity.
>
> In Qimin Yaoshu (544 CE, NE China), the word for Taro (芋*) appears in 5 of
> the ten scrolls: http://ctext.org/wiki.pl?if=gb&res=537732&searchu=%
> E8%8A%8B
>
> Scroll two mentions planting taro: 《種芋第十六》"Chapter 16: Planting Taro."  It
> quotes from the Shuowen Jiezi (100 CE), so taro goes back at least that far.
>
> Scroll 4 is another planting method for taro.
>
> Scroll 7 is only mentioned in an annotation, and it's wordy so I'm not
> going to read through in full detail.
>
> Scroll 8 is the soup recipe I translated in my post.
>
> Scroll 10 is using taro stems to describe the qualities of stems of other
> non-Chinese native plants such as sugar cane and banana.
>
>
> * I hope this renders for you, since if you're having problems rendering
> the unicode characters for thorn, eth, and accented o in my name, you're
> probably also not going to render Chinese characters either.
>
> On Tue, Feb 14, 2017 at 1:22 PM, Stefan li Rous <stefanlirous at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> Madhavi asked some questions to ??rfinnr Hr??geirsson, and I wanted to
>> comment on some of this, separate from this translation effort.
>>
>> <<< "Taro seed"- what was the original term? Do you mean Colocasia
>> esculenta? Because I grow Colocasia esculenta, and it has no seeds. The
>> parts you eat are the root (actually a corm) and the leaves. It's an
>> elephant ear plant.  >>>
>>
>> Where and when was taro used in medieval times? I have only a small file
>> on taro in the Florilegium,
>> taro-msg (4K) 2/10/14 Use of the taro plant in period.
>> and my knowledge of taro is minimal, mostly from grade school social
>> studies classes. I'd love to get more info, an article, bibliography etc.
>> to put in the Florilegium.
>>
>> <<< often sweetened and spiced like a medieval ginger beer. >>>
>> Again, a subject I have little info on. I would love to get more info on
>> ginger beer, ginger tea etc. What is the difference between ginger tea and
>> ginger beer? If the latter alcoholic and the former isn't?
>>
>> Thanks,
>>     Stefan
>> --------
>> THLord Stefan li Rous    Barony of Bryn Gwlad    Kingdom of Ansteorra
>>    Mark S. Harris           Austin, Texas          StefanliRous at gmail.com
>> http://www.linkedin.com/in/marksharris
>> **** See Stefan's Florilegium files at:  http://www.florilegium.org ****
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Sca-cooks mailing list
>> Sca-cooks at lists.ansteorra.org
>> http://lists.ansteorra.org/listinfo.cgi/sca-cooks-ansteorra.org
>>
>
>
>
> --
> Alec Story
>



-- 
Alec Story