Keith
Very Addicted
- Messages
- 1,630
- Points
- 930
- Age
- 75
Since making this video I have done a little more research. Most authorities on the subject of foods seem to agree that garlic was not high on the list of good foods, but further research of my own shows that this was mainly among the upper classes, and it was because of the garlic smell. Among the "middling sort" and peasants garlic was used as a food and for medicine, internal & external. So I guess it is a personal choice. Following is a letter from Food Timeline.
On 11 February 2011 09:55, Lynne Olver <[email protected]> wrote:
Mr. Burgess,
Welcome to the Food Timeline. Thank you for sending this challenging question. Most American food history books are curiously silent when it comes to Colonial-era American garlic. Our survey of primary sources (historic cookbooks, with historic notes) confirms the existence of Old-World garlic in Colonial America. This item was transplanted by settlers of Spanish, English and French descent. Early uses concentrated on meat seasoning and pickling flavors. Notes referencing medicinal uses are offered but we find no evidence suggesting garlic was routinely "prescribed" as a cure in the New World. Garlic (& other Mediterranean vegetables such as broccoli) eventually "disappeared" from American cuisine as the 19th century progressed. They were "reintroduced" by Italian immigrants in the early 20th century.
ABOUT COLONIAL AMERICAN GARLIC
"During the sixteenth century, Spanish priests and soldiers established several missions in the Southeast. St. Augustine was the most important, but others came into being along the coasts of Georgia, Carolina, and (briefly) Virginia...In the warm climate, mission gardens yielded favorites brought from Europe. such as melons, figs, hazelnuts, oranges, chickpeas, greens, herbs, peas, garlic, barley, pomegranates, cucumbers, wine grapes, cabbage, lettuce, and even sugarcane...The seventeenth century saw the planting of permanent English colonies in North America, including the beginning of European settlement of the Chesapeake. Colonists usually brought provisions reflecting the diet of contemporary Britain, which was based on grains, meat, and milk products...Luxurious meals for the upper classes included elaborate spicing...Martha Washington's Booke of Cookery, a seventeenth-century manuscript recipe book...passed down in the Custis family of Virginia, provides a glimpse of this cuisine, with its profusion of custard curd dishes, rose water, garlic (later to be virtually forbidden),..."---Cambridge World History of Food, Kenneth F. Kiple & Kriemhild Conee Ornelas [Cambridge University Press:Cambridge] 2000, Volume Two (p. 1305)
[1749]
"To Roste A Sholder of Muton With Garlick. First boyle ye [the] garlick in 2 or 3 waters, & let ye shoulder of muton be green roasted. Yn [then] gravie into a dish, & put to it ye garlick & a little clarret wine & some nutmegg. let them stew a little together, & when yr shoulder of muton is layed in ye dish, you may eyther take yout ye garlick or leave it in as you like it...This dish has a French air; it is no so much the discreet presence of garlic as the technique of green roasting and finishing up the meat rather as a salmis. (Green roasted meat is virtually raw in the center.) The roasting was done on a spit...the stewing would have been done on the chafing dish. There is no clue to how much garlic would have been used, but the flavor is remarkably milk with this treatment. Garlic (Alliuim sativum) derives from Old English gar, meaning spear, and leack, meaning leek (OED). Gerard reporst that 'Garlicke is very sharpe, hot and dry (as Galen saith) in the fourth degree...it cutteth such grosse humours as are tough and clammy...it engendreth sharpe and naughty blood'. (Parboiling attenuates these qualities.) It is also considered for an old cough, 'it breaketh and consumeth wind,' it kills works, and is effective against pestilence. A number of sixteenth-century writers on health allowed that garlic would be beneficial to the English because of the climate and their predisposition to 'cold and clammy phlegm,' but though that they were too discerning a people to resort to such a medicine except in extremis. And garlic was, and remains, rare in English cookery."---Martha Washington's Booke of Cookery, transcribed by Karen Hess [Columbia University Press:New York] 1981, 1995 (p. 76-77)
Taken from: http://neclhg.freeforums.net/thread/204/garlic-food-medicine
