[Sca-cooks] European squash/pumpkin/gourd?

[Julia Szent-Gyorgyi]

Quoth Thorvald:
>   There is one distantly possible in the Transylvanian cookbook (c. 1600).
That's one of the ones I included in my question. What do you consider
it "distantly possible" for, and why?

So based on Scappi and that fruit-seller painting, among others, I'm
pretty sure that both zucchini-like and pumpkin-like vegetables (or
botanically actually fruits) were available in late period, at least
in southern climes and areas that traded with them. But that doesn't
help interpret the recipes: peeling, cutting up, and cooking in water
would work with any type of squash, really, and both zucchini and
pumpkin would work well flavored with toasted/fried onion and
milk/cream/sour cream.

But! I just noticed that the next recipe in the Transylvanian cookbook
is also basically the same, but for cucumber:

>From cucumber thusly.
You can also cook it from cucumber thus, if you cannot get _tök_. Make
an omelette for this, too, if you serve it at one table for many,
slice up the omelette, like they do with bacon for peas; you can cook
this _tök_ or cucumber with sour cream, too, as well as with sweet
milk.

I've never cooked a cucumber. (Unless you count fermentation/pickling
as cooking.) Anyone have any experience with this? I would suspect
cucumber to behave a lot more like zucchini than like pumpkin, meaning
that these recipes are for a summer squash-type vegetable.

Julia
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