[Sca-cooks] Cocuzze in the Opera of Bartolomeo Scappi

[Terry Decker]

"Cocuzza (cucuzza, pl. cucuzzi)" is common usage rather than scientifically identifying.  The word can be translated to English as "marrow", "pumpkin", or Cucurbita maxima (a species of New World squash with a number of varietals).  

The Sicilaian usage of "cucuzza" appears to be specifically for a bottle gourd (Langenaria) of the snake or yard long variety although other types of bottle gourd are used in various modern recipes.

As to Scully's choice of the word pumpkin, it is the modern form of the word "pompion."  The word first appears in the Grete Herball (1526) being used to describe a type of pumpkin or melon deriving through French from the Latin pepo."  Earlier usage in French may have referred to basket gourds (Langenaria), but that is a speculation on my part.  "Marrow" in this usage is of 17th Century origin.  The scientific taxonomy of "C. maxima" is 17th or 18th Century.  Thus, Scully's choice of "pumpkin" in a translation of Scappi is in keeping with the translation of a 16th Century text.  

Just one of those little things that make working from Scully veddy interestink.

Bear
On 6/9/2019 11:32:44 AM, jimandandi at cox.net <jimandandi at cox.net> wrote:
We were discussing pumpkins and other new world cucurbits just a week or so
ago. The Trimaris Cooks Guild is having a potluck based on a specific
luncheon menu out of Scappi, and I am looking for a couple extra vegetable
dishes to add, and lo and behold there are three dishes that call for
"pumpkin" in the English translation (V.106 "to prepare a tourte of domestic
pumpkin", V.107 "to prepare a pumpkin and onion tourte" and V.108 "to
prepare a pumpkin tourte without a shell") so I looked at the index in the
back, which includes the original Italian titles of the dishes and all are
"cocuzze". Even though Scully chose to translate the word cocuzze as
"pumpkin", the instructions clearly are referring to lagenaria gourds. They
describe scraping then boiling the vegetable, then squeezing out the
moisture and then grinding it up in a mortar. That is clearly not a pumpkin,
pumpkin disintegrates when boiled. In the first recipe, the Italian is
"cocuzze nostrali", which is translated by Terence Scully as "domestic
pumpkin" but could also be "local gourd", as "nostrali" usually means
"local". I even image-googled "cocuzze" and the second result is a Lagenaria
gourd!
(https://www.lastampa.it/2015/06/26/societa/cocuzza-parente-sconosciuta-dell
a-zucchina-XzsUo2lOjVLR6ut4zTLPXM/pagina.html) According to the article,
it's still eaten in southern Italy. I think Terence Scully was wrong to
translate this as "pumpkin". What do you think?



Madhavi

Trimaris



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