Healthy soil and sustainable growing

["bruce smith" <cityhomesteader@gmail.com>]

a great Link is the PLants for a future Database

http://www.pfaf.org/

On Nov 16, 2007 4:52 AM, TradingPostPaul <tradingpost@riseup.net> wrote:
>
>  Vegetables in Medieval Europe
> http://www.oldcook.com/en/medieval_vegetables.htm
>
> Fruits and vegetables might be acknowledged edible without ever being set
> on a dinner table. The chosen ones are chosen either for the sake of
> showing off a social status or because of the dietary views of the times.
> Muddy vegetables were left to the lower classes while the noble elite and
> the upper classes marked a preference for the more aerial fruit. According
> to Jean Louis Flandrin, recipes for vegetables accounted for only 9% in
> cookbooks of the 14th and 15th century against 21% for books written since
> the beginning of the 18th century. Also, more vegetable recipes are found
> in books from Mediterranean parts, notably Italy and Catalonia. Should we
> put it on the count of the survival of Roman traditions and Arabic
> influence for the southern countries, and on the count of the influence of
> German traditions for the northern ones ?
> Consumption of edible plants also depends on their growing in a certain
> place and at a certain time. Capitulary of Charlemagne de villis vel curtis
> imperii, (of imperial lands and imperial courts), which was written around
> AD 800, states a list of plants recommended for cultivation in chapter 70,
> from which interesting observations can be gathered :
>
> - There are vegetables well known today in the list such as cucumber,
> chickpeas, celery, carrots, cabbage, leeks, peas, lettuce, garlic, onions,
> shallots, as well as familiar aromatic herbs as mint, sage, cumin, anise,
> parsley, savory, coriander.
>
> - There are what we might call "forgotten" plants, either due to their
> feeding or medicinal qualities having been overtaken by an ornamental
> function, such as lilies, roses and gladioli, or because they are plants
> nowadays considered wild, and the fact that they are edible has been
> forgotten, as tansy, catmint, smyrnium olusatrum, orache, mallow.
>
> - Missing in the list are vegetables considered basic today. These were
> unknown in Europe because they were of transatlantic origin such as
> potatoes, tomatoes, beans, courgette, or because, as aubergine, they
> reached Europe only later, brought in by the Arabs from the East.
>
> Vegetables in Medieval Europe :
> .
> * Artichokes
> * Aubergine or Eggplant
> * Cardoons
> * Carrots
> * Cabbage
> * Medieval European gourds
> * Melon
> * Parsnip
>
> Greens for porry :
> * Swiss chard
> * Spinach
> * Leeks
>
> - Top of page -
> .Artichokes and cardoons
>
> Oldcook : Vegetables in Medieval Europe : Cardoon Cardoon
> Photo : Marie Josèphe Moncorgé
>
> Artichoke : genus cynara scolymus
> Cardoon : genus cynara cardunculus
> Prickly thistles from the Mediterranean basin generated two edible plants
> first gathered from the wild then cultivated, which were often confused in
> the past, i.e. artichoke and cardoon. Both favour mild climates : artichoke
> is mainly grown in Italy, Spain, southern France and Brittany whilst
> cardoon is grown in the Rhône-Alps region (François Couplan considers
> it a forgotten vegetable).
>
> Pline the Elder wrote of the growing of "carduus" in Carthage and Cordoba,
> and Columella cited "cynara" as grown in Andalusia, 1st century AD. Apicius
> gave us 7 recipes for "sfondili" and 3 recipes for "cardui" (books III, XIX
> and XX). Jacques André considers sfondili as cardoon hearts and cardui as
> cardoons in the 1987 edition of his translation. But Michel Pitrat and
> Claude Foury in History of vegetables, INRA, 2003, consider that a
> sfondilus is an artichoke and a carduus is a cardoon. Mosaics from Tunisia
> figure artichoke hearts, but a cardoon heart looks so much like that of an
> artichoke, so ?
>
> The word cynara was dropped early on in Latin while carduus which gave
> cardoon and chard stayed in use throughout the Middle Ages. Swiss chard
> though, with its large leaves, has nothing to do with cardoon and wasn't
> known before the 17th century.
> Artichoke, on the other hand, was already established for sure in the 10th
> century in Andalusia, under the name of harschaf. Artichoke reached Italy
> and Navarre in the 15th century. It was called carcioffola in Italian and
> cachofa in Spanish, carxofa in Catalan. It was grown in the Languedoc
> region of southern France in the 16th century. Rabelais and Ronsard wrote
> about artichokes in old French, spelling artichaulx or artichôs.
> Artichokes were reputed to be aphrodisiac then.
>
> Olivier de Serres wrote about the cultivation of cardoons and artichokes in
> 1600 in the Vivarais Mountains West of the Rhone River and cardoons are
> still traditionally eaten for Christmas in Provence and in the Dauphine
> region.
>
> - An other vegetable | Top of page -
> .Aubergine or Eggplant
>
> Oldcook : Vegetables in Medieval Europe - Aubergines Tacuinum sanitatis
> Aubergines
> Tacuinum sanitatis in medicina (extract)
> Codex Vindobonensis series nova 2644 der Oesterreichischen
> Nationalbibliothek
>
> Solanaceae family, genus Solanum
> It is called vatin gana in Sanscrit, badindjan in Persian, al badin jan in
> Arabic and Alberginia in Catalan … for the eggplant comes from India. The
> oldest recipes for "moussaka" are found in Arabo-Persian cookery. It is the
> Arabs that introduced aubergine to Spain when it was under the rule of
> Islam. Many recipes for aubergine are found in Arabo-Persian and
> Arabo-Andalusian books, notably the Baghdad Cookery Book (1226) and the
> Anonymous Andalusian cookbook of the 13th century. There are 4 recipes for
> alberginia in the Sent Sovi, 1324, 3 recipes by Robert de Nola in Naples,
> beginning of the 15th century. The word aubergine does not appear in France
> before 1750 though, as in fact the eggplant was only eaten in Spain, Greece
> and southern Italy for several centuries. Aubergine was suspicious in the
> northern parts, just as for the not yet known tomatoes, so long mistrusted
> later on. Both plants are of the same family as the deadly nightshade, and
> German botanist of the 16th century Leonhart Fuchs said that the word
> aubergine alone should cause fright to those who care for their health.
>
> Aubergines in the Sent Sovi are cooked au gratin with cheese :
> Capitol CLI. Qui parla con se deuen coura albergines en casola
> You take the aubergines and peel them and then cook them. And when they are
> cooked, soak them in the cold water and then press them between 2 platters.
> Take a terracotta dish and pour in the water with the spices, add some good
> [cottage] cheese and mix it all together. And then when the contents of the
> dish are well mixed, you take the aubergines and lay them in the dish and
> bring it to the furnace. And let it cook in the furnace like a tart. If you
> don't want to bring it to the furnace, cook it with the embers on a
> trivet, and put a lid on the dish with embers on top of it.
>
> - An other vegetable | Top of page -
> .Carrots
>
> Apiaceae or Umbelliferae family – genus Daucus carota.
> Wild carrots grow all over Europe, in parts of Asia and in northern Africa.
> But Philippe-André de Vilmorin showed, around 1830 (see Jardin des Hommes
> by J.B. de Vilmorin, 1991), that it was difficult to start over and breed a
> garden carrot from a wild plant. Carrots kept to being long yellow and
> ligneous roots for a long time. Apicius (Liber III – XXI – 1 to 3) gave
> 3 recipes for "carotae" : fried, with a garum fish sauce mixed with wine,
> with vinaigrette, or boiled and cooked with a cumin sauce. Carrots
> (carvitas) are found in the list of vegetables recommended for cultivation
> by Charlemagne in the Capitulare de villis vel curtis imperii (Of imperial
> lands and imperial courts). Ibn al-Awwam, in the Kitab al-Filahah – his
> book on Agriculture, 12th century – told of 2 kinds of carrots : the red
> carrot, already known in Syria in the 4th century, and a larger but less
> tasty variety of a green-yellow colour. Actually, it was a woody yellow or
> red carrot that was known in the West until a carrot called the "long
> orange" was invented in Holland in the 17th century and originated the
> orange carrots we eat today. Not until the beginning of the 19th century
> did the production of modern carrots start in France.
>
> Carrots were often mixed-up with parsnips. Recipes by Apicius are entitled
> "carotae sev pastinacae" (carrots or parsnips). A carrot is called
> pastanaga in Catalan, which is close to the Spanish pastinaca for parsnip.
> We find little carrots in the medieval recipes of the West, a bit more in
> the Baghdad Cookery Book or in Arabo-Andalusian cookery. There are 2
> recipes with carrots in the Liber de Coquina (V, 11 and 12) : the Lombard
> compound and the Teutonic compound. In the Sent Sovi there is a recipe for
> white carrots in almond milk (pastanagues blanques : qui parla con se ffa
> pastanagua ab let de amelles, CXIII). And carrots again are mentioned in
> the Ménagier de Paris, in the section dealing with Other small and
> unnecessary things, where it is advised to cook them like turnip, and where
> they are described as red roots, sold by the handful at the central market.
>
> - An other vegetable | Top of page -
> .Cabbage
>
> Oldcook : Vegetables in Medieval Europe - Vilmorin's Cabbage Cabbage from
> Milan
> Album Vilmorin - lithographie 1862
>
> Cruciferae Family, Brassica oleracea species.
> Origins : a wild perennial plant some 60 cm to 1 m high, which is usually
> found on rocky coasts and cliffs in Western Europe and around the
> Mediterranean Sea, reaching to the Near East. Cabbage has been cultivated
> for 5 or 6 thousand years. More than 400 varieties of cabbage have been
> identified as issuing from this wild cabbage plant : round red or green
> cabbage, kale, cauliflower, Brussels sprout, broccoli and many regional
> varieties in each of the European countries. The common round cabbage was
> already grown during the reign of Julius Cesar. Cauliflower, which comes
> from the eastern shores of the Mediterranean Sea, was called Syrian cabbage
> in Arabian Andalusia of the 12th century. Olivier de Serres, in 1600, in
> the Théâtre d'agriculture et mesnage des champs, speaks of
> cauli-fiori, as the Italians say, still little found in France.
> Romans already ate the same kind of broccoli as nowadays : Apicius gives
> several recipes for cimas and coliclos (broccoli and cabbage sprouts).
> Brussels sprout appeared in the 16th century, but really developed into the
> present form, beginning only in the early 19th century.
>
> In Hipocratism's medieval classification, cabbage is a wet food. Poet of
> the 10th century Macer Floridus said : Though indeed a common plant of our
> kitchen gardens, cabbage keeps to having numerous healthy virtues.
> According to Cato the Elder, Romans used cabbage as a medicine for more
> than 600 years (related in Les Bonnes Herbes du Moyen Age by Laetitia
> Bourgeois-Cornu).
>
> Cabbage was such a common lower classes' vegetable that it usually
> wasn't included in the recipes of medieval cookery for soup or "porée".
> In the Ménagier de Paris (n°53), however, you can find a long
> description of 5 different kinds of cabbage, when to harvest each of them
> and how to prepare them : and you must know that the cabbages must be put
> on the fire very early in the morning and let to cook a very long time,
> longer than any other soup, with the fire hot and lively. They must soak in
> beef fat and no other, whether they are round cabbages or any other kind,
> apart from sprouting cabbages. You must also know that a beef or mutton fat
> broth is quite adequate, but that that of pork fat is good only for leek.
>
> Cabbage for sauerkraut
>
> - An other vegetable | Top of page -
> .Medieval European gourds
>
> Oldcook : Vegetables in Medieval Europe - Gourd Tacuinum sanitatis Gourd
> Tacuinum sanitatis in medicina (extract)
> Codex Vindobonensis series nova 2644 der Österreichischen
> Nationalbibliothek.
> Family Cucurbitacea, species Cucurbita lagenaria vulgaris siceraria
> Michel Chauvet – a researcher at INRA in Montpellier – says that you
> must positively put out of your mind the anachronical belief that the
> vegetables of today have always existed and are the same as those described
> by the Elders.
>
> Squash – Courge in French – is a perfect example of this anachronism :
> How to grow squash is thoroughly explained the Ménagier de Paris
> (gardening II, ii – 19), which also contains a recipe for squash (other
> spiced soups, 63). A courge is a congorde in Taillevent and is eaten as a
> soup. As for Maestro Martino he called squash zucche and made pies with it,
> and the Sent Sovi has several recipes for carabaces
>
> But … squash was unknown in Europe during the Middle Ages since it comes
> from the American continent (as well as beans).
> In fact, the Medieval European squash is not the pumpkin plant we know of
> nowadays (Cucurbita pepo), but the sort of gourd that is sometimes called
> calabash – not to mistake for the bottle gourd of Africa or for Calabaza,
> yet another kind. According to Michel Chauvet, the young fruit of gourd
> plants are as edible as zucchini – the Italian squash – also courgette.
> Seeds from the Lagenaria plant can still be found in specialized seed
> shops, by the way.
>
> The gourd is known by the name of cucurbita since antiquity : A specific
> chapter (LIII-IV) with 8 recipes for Cucurbitas is found in Apicius, and
> the cucurbitas are on Charlemage's list, in the Capitulare de villis vel
> curtis imperii. From a linguistics point of view : cucurbita gave cohourge
> then shortened into courde which, sometime after 1200, gave both gourd(e)
> and courge. Both words were used for the same vegetable in the Middle Ages,
> and squash is a word of American Indian origin.
>
> - An other vegetable | Top of page -
> .Melon
>
> Oldcook : Vegetables in Medieval Europe - Melons Tacuinum sanitatis Sweet
> melons
> Tacuinum sanitatis in medicina (extract)
> Codex Vindobonensis series nova 2644 der Oesterreichischen
> Nationalbibliothek
>
> Melon : Family Cucurbitacea, species Cucumis melo.
> With origins in Asia or South Africa, present varieties of melon are
> supposedly from the Caucasus or Armenia. Melon was already eaten in Ancient
> Egypt, in Ancient Greece and by the Romans.
>
> There are mix-ups in designations, sometimes, for the Cucumis melo species.
> Michel Chauvet – a researcher at INRA in Montpellier – says that you
> must positively put out of your mind the anachronical belief that the
> vegetables of today have always existed and are the same as those described
> by the Elders.
>
> And as you can see, the picture above from the Tacuinum shows an oblong
> shaped melon, much different from any kind grown today, witnessing to the
> difficulties in identification met by researchers. There were also, in
> antiquity and in the Middle Ages, confusions of designation between
> cucumber, melon, watermelon and gourd.
>
> Michel Chauvet explains that according to Pline (19,64-68), when the
> "cucumbers had grown to a considerable size they were called pepones." The
> Greek melopepôn derived from it and in turn the Latin melopepo, which
> mean "melon-apple", of which Pline says they are a new variety resembling a
> quince, growing to a round shape on the ground and of a golden colour
> …The only recipe given by Apicius (recipe 85) is called "Pepones et
> melons", which translator Jacques André rendered "watermelons and
> melons". [… ] But these might well have been two different kinds of melon
> – watermelon is citrullus lanatus not cucumis melo. In a note in the
> margin Jacques André specifies that the recipe is probably for cooked
> fruit ("compote") and adds that "we know that watermelon was cooked
> (Dioclès de Caryste ap. Athénée, 68th)". We can therefore gather that
> watermelon was probably not of the red and watery kind we eat nowadays. If
> It were to have been a cultivar of the citrullus lanatus sort it would
> rather have been the type of white fleshed watermelon called citre or
> gigerine that is traditionally used to make jam in Provence, or one of a
> kind that was picked immature (why not?). But I think it was just a large
> tasteless ancestral species of melon.
>
> In short, Apicius fixes Pepones and melons with pepper, pennyroyal, honey
> or vin de paille, garum, vinegar. Silphium was sometimes added (III-VII).
>
> Italian monks cultivated and improved melon during the Renaissance, in a
> papal summer residence in Cantalupo. Cantaloupe was then introduced in
> Avignon (Cavaillon melon is a sort of Cantaloupe).
>
> La Quintinie grew melon in a greenhouse in Versailles. In the 17th century
> in France, we found pompons – big tastless oblong fruits, and the sweet
> round melons. There were 65 varieties of melon at the end of the 19th
> century.
>
> - An other vegetable | Top of page -
> .Parsnip
>
> Oldcook : Vegetables in Medieval Europe - Parsnips Tacuinum sanitatis Photo
> : Jacques Bouchut
>
> Apiaceae or Umbelliferae family – genus Pastinaca sativa. Apicius has a
> same recipe for "carotae sev pastinacae" (carrots or parsnips)
> The wild parsnip has a whitish and ligneous carrot-like root. It was
> already eaten 2000 BC and nobody knows for sure yet, whether the ancient
> texts refer to carrots or parsnips. Capitulary of Charlemagne however
> clearly distinguishes carvitas from pastenacas. Two recipes for parnsnips
> in pâté (escheroy) are found in the Ménagier de Paris (161 and 267).
>
> A forgotten or depreciated vegetable in France, parsnip is still much eaten
> in Great Britain and in the Iberic peninsula. The fleshy root of a parsnip
> is thicker than that of a carrot. Parsnips are prepared the same way as
> carrots.
>
> Translator : Jean-Marc Bulit
>
>
>
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-- 
Bruce E Smith

@{--+----+------+------------

A little faith will bring your soul to heaven, but a lot of faith will
bring heaven to your soul.  ~Author Unknown