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

[James Prescott]

Greetings,

On 2018-10-17, 13:55, Julia Szent-Gyorgyi wrote:
> 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?

By "distantly possible" I mean for the recipe to be specifically for new 
world 'squash' rather than for one of the old world possibilities.

This is just my personal assessment, I have not done any detailed study, 
and could be wrong.  I base my assessment on the physical distance from 
Spain; transportation complications for fruits or plants especially to 
inland areas; and the general culinary differences between more western 
European countries and more eastern European countries which would have, 
I assess, moderated and delayed the transfer of recipes and ingredient 
use from west to east (and vice versa).  I read your third edition with 
fascination at the similarities and differences from the more western 
European cookbooks with which I am most familiar.  One example is "we 
don’t do that and it is frowned upon, for our ancestors didn’t do that", 
suggesting a cuisine much less ready to accept new recipes or 
ingredients from elsewhere than most of the more western European cookbooks.

Many of the recipes post 1492 have similarities with pre 1492 recipes 
that must have originally been for old world vegetables.  We probably 
can never know how many cooks had unhindered access to the new world 
'squashes', and how many either chose to, or were forced to, use the old 
world options.


Thorvald


> 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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