The Red Kaganate

Last Page Update: November 2, 2001 Contact Copyright Information Main Page Structure of the Red Kaganate Gatherings, Events,... Historic Steppes Tribes Legends of the Nomads Flags and other Identifiers Clothing and Apearance Food and related Matters Armour Archery Weapons and Combat Public Forum Resource Links Email: [email protected] Editor: Norman J. Finkelshteyn Late Period and Out of Period Foodstuffs by Dr. David D. Friedman This is an excerpt from Dr. David D. Friedman's collection of materials on medievalism "Cariadoc's Miscellany". Dr. Friedman's full collection of articles is online at Recreational Medievalism - http://www.best.com/~ddfr/Medieval/Medieval.html. It should be noted that Dr. Friedman's articles were written for the Society for Creative Anachronisms - a group whose Scope focus is based on Western Europe prior to the 17th century. The Kaganate reader should keep in mind the difference in Scope (the Kaganate being focused on the Turko-Mongol world 560 - 1530 CE). To do period cooking, it is desirable to avoid ingredients that were not available to period cooks. "Period," for the purposes of the SCA, is defined as pre-seventeenth century. Since most of the ingredients that are available now and were not available during the Middle Ages came into use between 1500 and 1700, it is not always easy to know which of them were available by the year 1600. One solution is to avoid all of the new ingredients, thus, in effect, moving the cutoff date back to about 1492. This makes a good deal of sense as a way of learning what early cooking was like. We already know what a cuisine that includes the new foodstuffs is like-it is all around us. If we restrict ourselves to ingredients that were available throughout the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, we are likely to learn a good deal more about how period cooking differed from modern cooking than if we include in our cooking anything that might possibly have been in use somewhere in Europe by late December of 1600. While there is much to be said for such a voluntary restriction, nothing in the rules or customs of the Society requires it of all cooks. Those who are willing to use late foodstuffs, providing they were in use by 1600, are left with the problem of determining which ones meet that requirement. This article is an attempt to do so. Corn, potatoes, cocoa, vanilla, peppers -essentially the whole list of New World foods-were used in the New World long before Columbus. Since almost all Society personae are from the Old World, it seems reasonable to limit ourselves to foods that came into use in the Old World before 1600. A further argument in favor of doing so is that we have-so far as I know-no Aztec cookbooks. (There are, however, descriptions by early travellers of what the natives of the New World ate and how they prepared it. References can be found in Finan and Coe.) Although potatoes were eaten during the fifteenth century, they were not eaten in the dishes for which we have fifteenth century recipes. Most of our period feasts are based on the cooking of a very limited part of the Old World. Almost all period cookbooks used in the Society are either Western European or Islamic. For the purposes of this article I will therefore be mainly concerned with the availability of foods in Western Europe prior to the year 1600-more precisely, with the question of what foods were sufficiently well known so that they might plausibly have been served at a feast. In trying to determine which foods were available in Western Europe before 1600, I have relied on a variety of sources. They include the Oxford English Dictionary (used primarily to determine when and in what context the English name of a food was first used-hereafter OED), cookbooks, and secondary sources including the Larousse Gastronomique (LG) and the Encyclopedia Britannica, 11th edition (EB). Most of the new foodstuffs of the sixteenth and seventeenth century came from the New World, but there were some important exceptions. I will start with them. Coffee The coffee plant is apparently native to Abyssinia. The use of coffee in Abyssinia was recorded in the fifteenth century and regarded at that time as an ancient practice (EB). I believe that there is a reference in one of the Greek historians to what sounds like coffee being drunk in what might well be Abyssinia, but I have not yet succeeded in tracking it down. Coffee was apparently introduced into Yemen from Abyssinia in the middle of the 15th century. It reached Mecca in the last decade of the century and Cairo in the first decade of the 16th century (Hattox). The use of coffee in Egypt is mentioned by a European resident near the end of the sixteenth century. It was brought to Italy in 1615 and to Paris in 1647 (LG). The first coffee house in England was opened in Oxford in 1650 (Wilson), and the first one in London in 1652 (EB). The earliest use of the word in English is in 1592, in a passage describing its use in Turkey (OED) . It appears that coffee is out of period for European feasts and late period for Islamic ones. Tea The use of tea in China and Ceylon goes back to prehistoric times. According to the Larousse, it was brought to Europe by the Dutch in 1610 and to England in 1644. According to the OED, it was first imported into Europe in the 17th century and first mentioned in a European language (Portuguese) in 1559. The first use of the word in English (in the form "Cha") is given as 1598; the passage seems to describe its use in China. It appears that tea is out of period for European feasts and (since it was being brought from China by sea rather than overland) even further out of period for Islamic feasts. It is, of course, in period for Chinese and Japanese feasts. So far as I know, iced tea is a modern invention. Bananas The Four Seasons of the House of Cerruti, an Italian manuscript of the fourteenth century (based on an Arab work of the eleventh century) mentions bananas as something which "we know of .. only from texts or tales from merchants from Cyprus or pilgrims from the Holy Land. Sicilians ... know them well." It is clear from the accompanying picture that the artist had never seen a banana. The first bunch of bananas is said to have reached England in 1633 (Wilson). Citrus Fruit Citrus fruit are native to southern Asia and the Malay Archipelago, and cultivated citrus occur very early in China. In the West, the citron was known to classical antiquity. By the 10th c. the Arabs had sour oranges, and by the 12th century lemon, sour orange, citron, and pummelo had all made it as far as Spain and North Africa. By the 13th century lemon, sour orange, citron, and what is probably lime are described from northern Italy. The sweet orange is mentioned in a few documents from the second half of the 15th century as growing in Italy and southern France, and seems to have been fairly widely grown by the early 16th century. In 1520 or thereabouts the Portuguese brought a new and superior sweet orange variety from China, which then spread around the citrus-growing areas of Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries. Mandarin oranges do not seem to have made it to Europe until the early 19th century. The grapefruit seems to have developed out of the pummelo in the West Indies in the 18th c. (Batchelor and Webber). Artichokes and Cardoons According to some sources, including McGee, the globe artichoke was known in classical antiquity; others describe it as bred out of the cardoon sometime in the later middle ages, probably in Muslim Spain. The latin word is "cynara;" our word "artichoke" comes from the Arabic "al kharsh�f." Some modern sources describe the cardoon as a kind of artichoke, while others regard it as a different vegetable ancestral to the artichoke. My guess is that the classical "cynara" was the cardoon, making the globe artichoke familiar to us late period. Molasses Molasses is a residue from the process of refining sugar. Treacle was originally the name of a medical mixture one of whose ingredients was honey. It originated in classical antiquity and survived into the Middle Ages; at some point molasses or sugar syrup began to be used instead of honey for the base. "When the production of molasses in Britain's refineries out-stripped the needs of both apothecaries and distillers, it was sold off in its natural unmedicated state as a cheap sweetener. Its name of molasses was taken by the early settlers to America. But in Britain in the later seventeenth century the alternative term 'common treacle' came into circulation, and thereafter it was known simply as treacle" (Wilson). Since, according to Wilson, England had its own sugar refineries by 1540, it is unclear whether molasses would have been used as a sweetener in England before 1600. The word "Molasses" first appears in English in 1582 and all of the pre-1600 references are to its existence abroad. Molasses is, however, mentioned by Hugh Platt in the 1609 edition of Delights for Ladies; I have not been able to find a copy of an earlier edition. Presumably molasses would have been used earlier in areas where sugar was grown, such as Spain, Sicily and the Middle East. Chemical Leavenings So far as we can discover, both baking soda and baking powder are far out of period. According to the 1992 Old Farmer's Almanac, Saleratus (Potassium Bicarbonate) was patented as a chemical leavening in 1840. Hartshorn (Ammonium Carbonate) was used for stiffening jellies by about the end of the sixteenth century (Wilson) but we have found no reference to its use as a leavening agent prior to the late 18th century. New World Foods Potatoes Sweet potatoes are described in 1555 as growing in the West Indies. By 1587 they are said to be "brought out of" Spain and Portugal, and described as venerous (aphrodisiacal). In 1599 Ben Johnson describes something as "above all your potatoes or oyster pies." Ordinary potatoes, according to the OED, were described in 1553 and introduced into Spain shortly after 1580. They reached Italy about 1585 and were being grown in England by 1596. By 1678 the potato is described as "common in English gardens." The Larousse gives somewhat earlier dates-1539 or 40 for the original importation into Spain, 1563 for the introduction into England ("but its cultivation was neglected there") and 1586 for the reintroduction by Sir Francis Drake. In 1593 several farmers were engaged to grow it in France, but in 1630 "the Parliament of Besan� on, from fear of leprosy, forbade the cultivation of the potato." In 1619 "Potato figures among the foods to be served at the Royal table in England." Both sorts of potatoes were being grown in parts of Europe before 1600, but it is not clear whether either was common enough to have been served at a feast. If served, potatoes would almost certainly have been regarded as a novelty. I know of no period recipes using potatoes. According to Crosby, the sweet potato arrived in China "at least as early as the 1560's." Corn "Corn," in British usage, refers to grains in general--most commonly wheat. The earliest reference in the OED to maize, the British name for the grain that Americans call corn, is from 1555. All of the pre-1600 references are to maize as a plant grown in the New World. Knowledge of maize seems to have spread rapidly; a picture of the plant appears in a Chinese book on botany from 1562. Pictures appear in European herbals from 1539 on. Finan concludes that they represent at least two distinct types of maize, one similar to Northern Flints, the other similar to some modern Caribbean varieties. Grains are variously described as red, black, brown, blue, white, yellow and purple. How soon did maize become something more than a curiosity? Leonhard Fuchs, writing in Germany in 1542, described it as "now growing in all gardens" [De historia stirpium-cited in Finan]. That suggests that in at least one European country it was common enough before 1600 so that it could have been served at a feast-although I know of no evidence that it in fact was, and no period recipes for it. On the other hand, John Gerard wrote, in 1597: "We have as yet no certaine proofe or experience concerning the vertues of this kinde of Corne, although the barbarous Indians which know no better are constrained to make a vertue of necessitie, and think it a good food: whereas we may easily judge that it nourisheth but little, and is of a hard and euill digestion, a more convenient food for swine than for man" (Crosby). Gerard's conclusion is still widely accepted in Europe. In West Africa, however, maize was under cultivation "at least as early as the second half of the sixteenth century..." and in China in the sixteenth century (Crosby). There is also a reference to its being grown in the Middle East in the 1570's (Crosby). Before leaving the subject of maize, I should mention that there have been occasional attempts to argue that it either had an Old World origin or spread to the Old World prior to Columbus. Mangelsdorf discusses the arguments at some length and concludes that they are mistaken. I know of no evidence that either corn starch or corn syrup was used in period. Tomatoes The first European reference to the tomato is apparently one in a book published in Venice in 1544; it describes the tomato as having been brought to Italy "in our time" and eaten in Italy "fried in oil and with salt and pepper." It appears from later references that tomatoes were used as food in both Spain and Italy from the 1500's on. The first printed recipes using tomatoes appear in Italian at the end of the 17th century, and are described as "alla Spagnuola." The first use of "Tomato" in English occurs in 1604, in a description of the West Indies (OED). As late as 1753, an English writer describes tomatoes as "a fruit...eaten either stewed or raw by the Spaniards and Italians and by the Jew families in England." But another writer, at about the same time, asserts that the tomato is "now much used in England," especially for soups and sauces. (Most of this is from Longone.) It appears tomatoes are out of period for northern Europe and late period for southern Europe, but that no period recipes more elaborate than "fried in oil and with salt and pepper" are known. Capsicum Peppers The term "pepper" refers to two entirely different groups of plants. The spice pepper, both black and white, is the fruit of any of a group of related Old World trees, and is routinely mentioned in period cookbooks. The capsicum peppers, which include both hot peppers (chili, cayenne, paprika, etc.) and sweet or bell peppers, are New World. According to the OED, the first English use of the word "chili" is in 1662. According to Dewitt and Gerlach, there is a Spanish reference to hot peppers from the New World in 1493; apparently the seeds had been brought back by Columbus. They assert that peppers are mentioned in Italy in 1526 and in Hungary (in a list of foreign seeds planted in a noblewoman's garden-as "Turkish Red Pepper") in 1569. They also say that "according to Leonhard Fuchs, an early German professor of medicine, chiles were cultivated in Germany by 1542, in England by 1548, and in the Balkans by 1569." Assuming that both the dates they give and those they attribute to Fuchs are correct, it sounds as though chile peppers, at least, had spread through much of Europe by 1600. This does not, however, imply that they were in common use. We have not found any period recipes using capsicum peppers, nor period references to their being served at feasts. Beans Some beans are New World, some Old World. Crosby lists "lima, sieva, Rangoon, Madagascar, butter, Burma, pole, curry, kidney, French, navy, haricot, snap, string, common, and frijole bean" as American, and mentions that soybeans are Old World. Broad beans, aka fava beans, are also Old World, as are lentils and chickpeas. According to Crosby, the haricot bean "was in Europe by at least 1542, for in that year the botanists Tragus and Leonard Fuchs described and sketched it. It was probably grown in appreciable quantities in France by the end of the century; otherwise, why would the Englishman, Barnaby Googe, write of it as the 'French bean' in 1572?" There is also one reference to kidney beans and French beans being grown in the Middle East in the 1570's (Crosby). Some Old World beans were known in Asia but not, as far as we know, in Europe or the Middle East; these include soy beans in China and mung beans in India. Peanuts With peanuts as with corn, there has been some controversy over origin. The OED describes them as native to the New World and West Africa. Higgins discusses the evidence at some length and concludes that the peanut is a New World plant introduced into West Africa early in the sixteenth century, probably by the Portuguese, and into the East Indies at about the same time, probably by both the Portuguese and the Spanish. European explorers in Africa a century later observed peanuts, maize, cassava, and tobacco, and concluded that they all were native. He cites Chevalier, Auguste, "Histoire de L'Arachide.," Rev. Bot. Appl. & d'Agr. Trop. 13 (146 & 147):722-752. According to Cosby, peanuts were grown in China in the sixteenth century. There is some archeological evidence for peanuts in China at a much earlier date, briefly discussed by Simoon; my conclusion from his discussion is that the evidence is probably wrong. The OED reports no uses of "peanut" (or "groundnut" as a synonym for "peanut") prior to the eighteenth century. Pumpkin, Squash, Gourd It seems to be well established that at least three of the four cultivated species of Cucurbita (C. pepo, C. moschata and C. maxima) existed in the New World long before Columbus; the fourth (C. ficifolia) is "ordinarily not thought of as a cultivated plant" (Whittaker), but apparently has been cultivated in the past. Whitaker argues, on the evidence of the absence of these species in the fifteenth century European herbals and their presence in the sixteenth century ones, that they were introduced into Europe from the New World. A variety of C. pepo similar to the squash now known as "Small Sugar" is illustrated in an herbal of 1542. What appears to be a field pumpkin is illustrated in 1560, with other varieties appearing in later herbals during the century. Whitaker concludes that "none of the cultivated species of Cucurbita were known to the botanists of the Western world before 1492." If so, all varieties of pumpkins, squash, and vegetable marrows are inappropriate before 1492; some were known in the sixteenth century, but may or may not have been sufficiently common to be used in feasts. There is, however, a plant translated as "gourd" in both Italian and Islamic cookbooks before 1492. The Four Seasons of the House of Cerruti, which is 14th century, shows a "Cucurbite" that looks exactly like a green butternut squash-a fact of which Whitaker seems unaware when asserting the absence of all varieties of Cucurbita from pre-sixteenth century sources. It seems likely, however, that his conclusion was correct, and that what is shown in the picture and used in the recipes is not C. pepo but Lagenaria sicereia. "The white-flowered gourd, Lagenaria sicereia," seems to "have been common to both Old and New Worlds" (Whitaker). I am told that the Italian Edible Gourd is a species of Lagenaria and available from, among others, J.L. Hudson, Seedman (P.O.Box 1058, Redwood City, CA 94064). Simoons describes a Lagenaria still used in modern Chinese cooking. We have obtained what we think is the right gourd from a Chinese grocery store and used it in period recipes with satisfactory results. The taste and texture are somewhat similar to zucchini but less bitter. The Chinese, or perhaps Vietnamese, name for one variety, which the grower assured us had white flowers, is "opo." Pineapple and Guava These are New World fruits that were being grown in India in the 16th Century (Crosby). Blueberry and Cranberry It appears from comments by Simmons that the term "blueberry" describes a number of different New World species of the genus Vaccinium; the bilberry, which is a member of the same genus, is Old World. The blueberry produces "larger and better flavored berries than the European bilberry." According to McGee, "The cultivated blueberry, a native of the American east, north, and northwest, has been purposely bred only since about 1910..." According to McGee, cranberries are also species of Vaccinium. According to several earlier sources, there is disagreement as to whether they are members of Vaccinium or belong in a separate genus, Oxycoccus. There are both old world and new world cranberries, but "the commercial cranberry ... is an American native." (McGee) The word "cranberry" seems to have come into use with the new world variant of the berry. It sounds, in both cases, as though a jelly made from modern berries would correspond pretty closely to something that might have been eaten in Europe in period, but individual berries would look noticably different from their old world relatives. We do not know of any period recipes using either berry. Spices According to the OED, the word "allspice" is first used in 1621 and "vanilla" in 1662. Both are from the New World. They might have been used earlier in Spain or Italy, since South American foods seem to have reached those countries earlier than England. Cocoa A drink made from cocoa was drunk by the Aztecs; according to the Larousse, it was unsweetened, flavored with vanilla, and drunk cold. Cocoa was brought back by the Spaniards in the sixteenth century; they flavored it "with chillies and other hot spices" and made it "into a soup-like concoction." The first recorded use of chocolate in England was in 1650; Wadsworth published a recipe, apparently translated from Spanish, in 1652. Black cites chocolate almonds being produced by 1670 and the use of chocolate "to flavour little light cakes called 'puffs'" and as a dinner dessert, with one recipe dating from 1681. Clotilde Vesco gives several recipes using chocolate which she dates to the fifteenth century(!) and attributes to documents in Florentine archives, if I correctly interpret the passage, but she gives little information about the originals and I suspect has either misdated or mistranslated them. Perhaps some reader whose Italian is better than mine can pursue the matter further. The OED gives the first use of "Chocolate" in English as 1604, in a history of the Indies. References to drinking it start in the 1660's. The word "Cocoa" appears much later. My conclusion is that a drink made from cocoa beans is in period, at least for Spanish personae, although the drink would be very different from modern cocoa, but that the use of chocolate as a food or an ingredient in foods is probably out of period. Turkeys The first reference to turkeys in the OED is in 1555. According to the Larousse, Brillat-Savarin says that turkeys came into use in Europe in the 17th century. There seems to have been some confusion initially with the guinea fowl, which is an Old World bird; it is therefore hard to be certain which early mentions of turkeys refer to what we now call turkeys. It seems likely, however, that turkeys were being eaten in Europe before 1600. References Batchelor, Leon D. and Webber, Herbert John, The Citrus Industry, 1946. Black, Maggie, "Seventeenth Century Chocolate," in Petits Propos Culinaires, 14, June 1983. Coe, Sophie, articles on Aztec and Inca food in Petits Propos Culinaires, 19, 20, 21, and 29. Crosby, Alfred W. Jr., The Columbian Exchange: Biological and Cultural Consequences of 1492, Greenwood Publishing, Westport CT, 1972. Dewitt, Dave and Gerlach, Nancy, The Whole Chile Pepper Book, Little, Brown Co., Boston 1990. Finan, John J., Maize in the Great Herbals. Chronica Botanica Company, Waltham, Mass. 1950. Hattox, Ralph S., Coffee and Coffeehouses, The Origins of a Social Beverage in the Medieval Near East, University of Washington Press, Seattle, 1985. Higgins, B. B., "Origin and Early History of the Peanut" in The Peanut-The Unpredictable Legume, A Symposium, The National Fertilizer Association, Washington, D.C. 1951. Longone, Jan, From the Kitchen, The American Magazine and Historical Chronicle Vol. 3 No. 2 1987-88. My principal source on tomatoes. Mangelsdorf, Paul C., Corn: Its Origin Evolution and Improvement. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass. 1974. McGee, Harold, On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen, Consumer's Union, Mt. Vernon, N.Y. 1984. Alan E. Simmons, Growing Unusual Fruit, Walker and Company, N.Y. 1972. Frederick J. Simoons, Food in China, CRC Press, Boca Raton 1991. Judith Spencer, tr., The Four Seasons of the House of Cerruti (late fourteenth century Italian). Vesco, Clotilde, Cucina Fiorentina fra Medioevo e Rinascimento, 1984. Wadsworth, Capt. John, Chocolate: or, An Indian Drinke. London, 1652. Apparently translated from a book by Melchor de Lara, "Physitian General for the Kingdome of Spaine", 1631. Whitaker, Thomas W., "American Origin of the Cultivated Cucurbits," Annals of the Missouri Botanical Garden, 1947. Wilson, C. Anne, Food and Drink in Britain: From the Stone Age to recent times, Harper and Row 1974. This is an extraordinarily careful and detailed book. This essay is still growing; if you come across relevant information, please write.