About those wild mustards

With thanks to Ellin Barret who first piqued my curiosity for this post.

Because a friend posted this meme, I was off and running. So I decided to let my fingers do the walking through Wikipedia to resolve for once, and for all, the differences between the escaped feral “wild” mustards that ravage the California landscape in spring. And yes, we do have several rather diminutive native mustard species.

What I discovered is that there was not one species, but over 30 separate species of “wild” mustard plants or brassica. And very few “wild”mustards are actually wild, they are almost all feral. Our most favored mustard species, Eurasian Brassica oleracea, that the ancient Celts and Romans were so fond of, gives us those yummy cultivars (all from the same species, like a breed), including kale, cabbage, collard greens, broccoli, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts, kohlrabi, etc.

Although some species of mustard plants were established crops in Hellenistic and Roman times, there are few archeological records. Wild forms of mustard and its relatives, the radish and turnip, found over Eurasia, suggests domestication took place in that region. However, Zohary and Hopf conclude: "Suggestions as to the origins of these plants are necessarily based on linguistic considerations." The Encyclopædia Britannica states that mustard was grown by the Indus Civilization of 2500–1700 BC. —Wiki

An Asian mustard species from the Hindu Kush, Brassica rapa, one of the first invasive field mustards to bloom in California, gives us bok choy, Napa cabbage (really Beijing cabbage!), rapini, turnips, canola oil, etc. More on native and invasive mustards here.

Highly invasive black mustard or Brassica nigra is the most common species found in California. The seeds were theoretically brought here by the Franciscan friars scattering mustard seeds as they walked from mission to mission—bits and seeds of B. nigra were found in adobe brick made in the 1700s. 

Also, according to the scriptures, tiny mustard seeds were held in high regard because though the seeds may be small, their potential for growth is enormous; to enter the kingdom of heaven begins with faith. Jesus was reputed to have said:

"For truly I tell you, if you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, 'Move from here to there,' and it will move; and nothing will be impossible for you." (Matthew 17:20-21)

Nearly all Brassica seem to have one thing in common, a four-petaled flower shaped like a cross, hence the name cruciferous vegetables. Even the diminutive jewelflower species of California, Nevada and the Southwest have four petals, but they are so tiny, they are nearly invisible. 

No matter how you feel about invasive species, I must admit that it is pretty stunning when entire hillsides are solid yellow with mustard in spring. It’s a great cover crop, conditions the soil (and kills pests.) But it is so invasive that it also smothers all native species—including our diminutive milk maids, and vigorous California poppies.

And yes, we do have many diminutive native California brassica species according to iNaturalist. My personal favorites are a magenta wallflower, or rockcress, milk maids, desert candles, and the crazy stripped-down endemic jewelflowers—some species so rarified they only grow in one small patch in the world. It seems that each mountain range has its own species of jeweleeed—and most are endangered species.

And closely related to black mustard, and B. rapa, the Brassica napus or brown mustard species, aka rapeseed, also gives us canola oil, Siberian kale, and rutabagas. Originally from India, it spread to Asia and farmers diversified it by developing cultivars. It's a really popular cover crop in Ukraine along with those heliotropic North American sunflowers. 

Yes, North American: Helianthus annuus—though they were first domesticated and cultivated by Native Americans 4500 years ago, they were commercialized in Russia and Ukraine. Sunflowers and mustard are important sources of vegetable oil. All that oil to fuel the world. We won’t discuss the atrocities suffered by mustard gas unleashed by the Germans at Ypres during World War I.

The ancient Romans not only invented fish sauce (of the Worcestershire persuasion), they also might have invented mustard as a condiment (the Egyptians also used mustard) by mixing ground mustard seeds with grape juice (called “must"), thus giving us the word mustard!

The word "rape" came from Latin for turnip, rāpa or rāpum, Greek word ῥάφη, rhaphe. The Romans were quite crazy for their cabbages. 

Radish means root in Latin. Apparently Egyptians were noshing on radishes before the Pyramids were built. Perhaps the workers were fueled on by radishes and salt. After all, the Romans paid their workers with salt, which means salted cruciferous greens, hence the word salary.

Meanwhile, the French are still buttering and salting their radishes. Forget about that sinus cleaner, Japanese wasabi. Medieval Germans were so crazy for radishes that they grew them bigger and better. Imagine massive 100-pound radishes ravishing the countryside. Radishes, not mustard, were the first cruciferous crops introduced to the Caribbean in the 1500s.

Brassica oleracea probably came from Crete. Or it was a stowaway on Jason’s Golden Fleece. The Greeks too were so mad for radishes (which probably came from China by way of Egypt), that they made little gold radish talismans to offer up to Apollo. Why the sun god needed radishes is anyone’s guess. You’d think horses or chariots or wine would’ve been a more practical gift. Ok, I’ll stop rooting around now on Wiki.

Note bene: I never know where writing ideas will come from. It always catches me by surprise! When I was a child, I was always making equivalencies, that is relationships between things—especially plants and animals. I guess some things never change. When I finally adulted (some could clain that I am still attempting to achieve adulthood), I discovered most of my correlations were spot on. 

At one point, I thought all that wild mustard was native, and it was only one species. When I joined a California naturalist group, I learned that there were more than one invasive mustard species, and that’s probably the thing that spurred me on because I cannot tell the difference between field mustard and black mustard, it’s all mustard to me.

Potayto, potato. How about tomapotatl as pomato is already taken?

Do check out Cultivariable, a great site for everything potato, including buying seeds.

The other day I recalled reading an article in July, 2017 that claimed that potatoes also grew in North America, and I thought what was dubbed the Indian potato was merely a simile, something lost in translation, or a case of mistaken identity. There was almost no follow-up information on it. I chalked it up to a mistranslation. Looks like, but is not equal to….and then Covid came along and I forgot about it. 

Yesterday, on Facebook, Discover Magazine reposted an archived article from 2021 on Solanum jamesii, or the Indian potato, now renamed the Four Corners “potato,” which renewed my interest. But the somewhat updated article compared it to domestic potatoes because it produces tubers. I thought to myself: hundreds of others solanum species have tubers too. 

However, the Four Corners potato, Solanum jamesii, is not what we think of as the ubiquitous potato. It's related to, but not the same as the garden potato, Solanum tuberosum, domesticated in the Andes 8,000 to 10,000 years ago. 

I let my fingers do the Googling, and found that what are called Apache and Navajo potatoes were hybrid varieties of the domestic potato. A dead end. Back in the summer of 2017, potato farmer /poet Art Goodtimes piqued my curiosity about Solanum jamesii which led to a spirited discussion about the origin and nomenclature of potatoes. And researching "Indian potatoes" led me to another order of plant altogether, an aquatic species related to taro root, Sagittaria latifolia, or duck potato. If it walks like a duck... What quackery!

Growing up Irish meant I ate potatoes every night for dinner. When I traveled through the Andes, I ate many varieties of strange potatoes, the most bitter was black, and grew on the island of Amantani in Lake Titicaca. My GI tract never forgave me. Apparently I was supposed to also eat the arcilla de chaco, or clay jacket—which absorbs the bitterness. When it comes to eating wild potatoes, bitter is not good, and sour is even worse. Spit it out, I tell you.

Astonishing diversity of Incan potatoes in CIP International Potato Center's seed bank.

There are something like 53 known species, and 4000 types, or varieties (not sub-species) of domestic potatoes in Peru alone. And even more in Bolivia and Chile—not to mention the Amazon. According to CIP, the International Potato Center, a genetic seed bank located in Lima, Peru, there are 151 to 180 species of wild potatoes, worldwide. The actual count is in dramatic flux as we discover new species, lose others due to climate change, and make advances in DNA sequencing. 

In fact, the entire Solanaceae family is undergoing genetic reconstruction. Solanaceae is a huge family, there are over 3000 to 4000 species worldwide. And solanum includes a whopping 1500 genera: potatoes, tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, tobacco, datura, and petunias, to name a few. They’re all members of the nightshade family.

And like most solanum species, the Four Corners “potato,” Solanum jamesii, prefers to grow in disturbed soil—which suggests to ecologist Bruce Pavlik and his wife, Lisbeth Louderback, who is an archaeology curator at the Natural History Museum of Utah, that this wild potato may have been domesticated as early as 11,000 years ago. I'm not so sure about that. It’s not like hybridizing teosinte.

Escalante Valley was once referred to as Potato Valley. Pavlik and Louderback have been genome sequencing the wild potatoes near the pueblos for signs of domestication—they're looking for a genetic bottleneck. Ok, so I have trouble with their advanced reference date, as it predates Andean domestication, and, besides, it was the end of the Ice Age. Potatoes hate frost. (In the 2017 Salt Lake Tribune article, Louderback, in her doctoral thesis, quoted 10,000 to 11,000 years. See also University of Utah News).

Everything about the Four Corners “potato” is toxic—like many members of the nightshade family—unless you boil or eat the immature tubers with gobs of white clay called gleesh’ (think Kaopectate) to counteract the toxins—so it’s different than the domesticated South American potatoes of Bolivia and Peru. It’s more of a dangerous wild potato cousin with a deadly kick.

It also turns out that the Four Corners “potato” toxins are also different than those found in domestic potatoes. The toxin is the same found in tomatoes. So maybe cavalierly calling it a potato just because it has a tiny tuber the size of a grape, is a bit premature. Maybe call it tomapotatl? 

Oddly enough, Santa Rosa, horticulturalist Luther, Burbank, the man who invented the Burbank, or russet potato, aka the Idaho potato, did developed an edible white potato-tomato berry called a pomato. But, unlike the ill-fated Wonderberry, also a nightshade, which resembled a huckleberry, victim of a smear campaign touting its toxicity, the pomato didn’t breed true, so he gave it up. But in 1934, an Australian successfully bred a pomato. Many flowering ornamental solanum produce tubers too, but noshing on them could be a one-way ticket to paradise—no matter how you roll the old snake-eyes.

I realize that it’s a handy linguistic shortcut to call this wild potato cousin a "potato," because it’s so much easier to say potato family instead of saying the nightshade family. Old habits die hard. And then there’s the toxic baggage attached to the word nightshade. Think Atropa Belladonna and deadly atropine. How about an expansionist mindset, with a new name, instead of a reductionist one handcuffed by the tyranny of simile?  

The Diné word for the potato is Nimási. Maybe we should call the Four Corners “potato” that. But then we’d also have to include the Apache, Hopi, Kawaik, Southern Paiute, Tewa, Zia and Zuni names, etc., not to mention the Ancestral Pueblo (Anasazi) names. So maybe calling it the Four Corners “wild potato” is a far better name. Otherwise we’ll have hordes of eco-nuts going afield to nosh on them thinking they’re benign.

For the record, botanists insist that pretty much all wild potato species are not safe to eat, other than in small amounts, due to their high glycoalkaloid content. Also, Solanum jamesii is not native to California, which means it was introduced from somewhere else. But where?

Wiki spells it out: “Solanum jamesii is a species of nightshade. Its range includes the southern United States. All parts of the plant, and especially the fruit, are toxic, containing solanine when it matures. Immature tuber roots are edible.” But they’re the size of grapes, so how do you know if they’re immature? They tell off-color jokes? 

It turns out that Solanum jamesii is not the only “wild potato” in the old pueblo. One or two other southwest wild potato species, depending upon how you count your potatoes, are Solanum stoloniferum aka Solanum fendleri, or Fendler’s horsenettle—genetically speaking, they are variants of one species, the controversy rages on. Horsenettles are generally not called potatoes, BTW. 

Because of the toxicity, they are often considered famine foods. And people sometimes eat the ripe berries, or ground cherries. And since they vary in toxicity, you never know which ones will be real stinkers I’m not willing to be the guinea pig.

Let’s talk toxicity. “The primary glycoalkaloid in this Solanum jamesii species is tomatine, unlike the domesticated potato, in which the primary glycoalkaloids are solanine and chaconine." And there’s also a smidgeon of the nicotine alkaloid too! Tomatine puts this species firmly in the tomato camp—name your poison. Put that in your pipe and smoke it. 

Wow! Potato blossoms. Cultivariable is a great site for everything potato, and then some.

The question begs, how closely related is the Four Corners “wild potato” to South American potatoes? As James Dinneen in The ancient potato of the future, quipped, DNA-wise, “The Four Corners potato, Solanum jamesii, is related to the common potato in somewhat the same way coyotes are related to dogs.” Both are canines and can interbreed. But the domestic dog is descended from wolves. You’re barking up the wrong tree if you think they're siblings.

Why does any of this matter? Because, Dear One, genetic diversity. Wild species carry a wide range of unusual survival traits. Take the Irish potato famine—had there been a way to introduce more resilient genes into the potato monoculture against the potato blight (Phytophthora infestans), then one million people might not have needlessly died. Or immigrated.

The USDA is interested in the Four Corners potato’s astonishing 8-year shelf life, resistance to disease, and to drought. Climate change is affecting domestic monoculture potatoes, which is the world's third largest important food crop. Potatoes need specific heat requirements and 12-hours of daylight in order to reproduce. Not all nightshades reproduce by seed, some spread via tubers, or reroot via creeping stolons.

I plowed through a lengthy list of solanum section of Petota, and found that Solanum commersonii is resistant to root rot and nematodes. Solanum demissum, Solanum pinnatisectum, and Solanum bulbocastanum, an ornamental nightshade, are resistant to the potato blight, and "has been used to genetically engineer resistance into the cultivated varieties of potatoes around the world." —Wiki 

Genetic traits from tough wild potato species can be hybridized into our domestic potatoes. And before you go off the deep end about genetic modification, every plant we consume has been genetically modified—from aubergine to zucchini. Especially corn and broccoli. Besides, the voodoo magic of crossbreeding solanum species is far better than sticking pins into a potato. 

Where is Mr. Potatohead when you need him?

True Quinces

Nascent fuzzy quince developing, Nicasio, ©Maureen Hurley 2018

The entire back yard of my friend, poet, Rebecca Morrison’s old Craftsman house in Sacramento was a vast impenetrable expanse of quince canes. She had no idea what to do with this advancing quince wicker thicket that looked like a bad case of Einstein’s hair on brillo pads and steroids. The rabbits and foxes, however, loved it, and called it home. 

The edible, or true quince of Asia Minor (with a range from Anatolia, to Armenia, Persia, and Iran), originally hailed from the Caucasus Mountains and the drought tolerant plant quickly spread to virtually all of the Fertile Crescent and Mesopotamia, North Africa and the Mediterranean, the Crimea, the Silk Road, and beyond.

Many old California homesteads often had quince thickets, planted alongside the prerequisite pears and apple orchards. When left to its own devices, the quince becomes a towering thicket, but it can be tamed, trained and pruned into a tree. Sort of. Their broad leathery leaves added vibrant colors to a fall landscape. Quince was also used as rootstock for finicky pear trees, and often went rogue if the pear tree died.

When I was a child, I loved the heavy perfumed odor of quince in late fall, picking the huge waxy fuzz-covered yellow orbs after the first frost, rubbing the fuzz off to make them shine like waxy golden suns, waiting for them to blett and ripen under my bed. Positively narcotic. 

I loved watching my grandmother canning quinces, mashing and straining the cooked pulp through layers of cheesecloth, which yielded a gorgeous blood-amber jelly laden with anthocyanins and tannins redolent with notes of apple, pear and citrus. Before the commercial invention of those little blue and white Knox gelatin packets, and commercial pectin such as Sure-jell (made with citrus), quince peels were used for their pugnacious pectin power to thicken canned fruit jams, jellies, and sauces.

Quinces, once considered food of the gods, associated with fertility and wedding feasts, became the infamous golden apples of discord in Classical literature, and associated with forbidden fruit in the Bible. They make scant appearance in modern literature, but there are occasional nods here and there in fairytales, and in medieval cookbooks. 

In Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, Juliet's nurse said quinces will be eaten at the wedding feast. NURSE. They call for Dates and Quinces in the Pastrie. Alas, that did not end well, for the wedding party that never was. In the 1859 narrative poem, The Goblin Market, Christina Rossetti called quinces goblin fruits. Let’s hope that that Edward Lear’s owl and pussycat fared a little better as they dined most elegantly on slices of cooked quince.

They dined on mince, and slices of quince, which they ate with the runcible spoon; and hand and hand, on the edge of the sand, they danced by the light of the moon, the moon, the moon, they danced by the light of the moon. —Edward Lear

The Owl and the Pussycat, by Edward Lear 1871

Quinces are astringent, and most varieties cannot be eaten raw unless your mouth is impervious to malic acid compounds and bitter tannins. Not to mention, they’re loaded with antioxidants. They are puckery, and hard as chalk, they will make your teeth hurt. You cannot eat them raw. Your tongue will fall mute, you will gag, and the lining of your mouth may want to run off with some olive oil to salve its wounds. 

Quinces, once imbued with magical powers, were reputed to stave off the plague and Black Death. Needless to say, quince, with its medicinal cornucopia, was extremely popular in the British Isles and northern Europe. Quinces were used as a condiment and digestive for fatty meats, such as goose. (Try reading this recipe aloud for shitzngiggles. Hint: þe is the, that odd þ is a th sound, called a thorn.)

Sawse madame. Take sawge, persel, ysope and saueray, quinces and peeres, garlek and grapes, and fylle the gees þerwith; and sowe the hole þat no grece come out, and roost hem wel, and kepe the grece þat fallith þerof. Take galytyne and grece and do in a possynet. Whan the gees buth rosted ynouh, take hem of & smyte hem on pecys, and take þat þat is withinne and do it in a possynet and put þerinne wyne, if it be to thyk; do þerto powdour of galyngale, powdour douce, and salt and boyle the sawse, and dresse þe gees in disshes & lay þe sowe onoward. —from The Forme of Cury

Still-life of quinces by Vincent van Gogh (1887), Wikipedia 

There is a train of thought that the golden quince was the original symbol for the apple tree of Eden—as the boreal ancestral apple trees don’t thrive in warm climates. They need sub-alpine conditions in order to grow and set fruit. Which throws a spanner into the idea that those apples of original sin fame were really quinces in the Garden of Eden. Maybe Adam and Eve’s tastebuds weren’t fully developed. Or they had a really heavy frost to blett the fruit. Or maybe that’s why raw quinces are generally inedible. All that original sin hooey just to ward you off. You’ve been duly warned!

But wait, the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden, was an apple. The Bible tells us so. Nope. This is a rather long segue in what gets lost in translation: see, all those Greek references to apples, the ones mentioned in Homer's Odyssey, the famous apple tussle of Aphrodite, Athena and Hera, and the golden apples of discord—all need to be taken with a grain of salt as they are referring to these pome fruits, furry golden orbs, that is, quinces—not actual apples.

To keep abreast of the situation, the Greek word "μήλον" for apple—or any kind of globular, or round fruit (and apparently fat-bottomed girls) is malon, or melon. The word, "μήλον" also referred to fat sheep or fat goats. Pomaceous: anything-apple-shaped. Round. Fat. There must've been some seriously fat goats way back then. 

Sappho of Lesbos salaciously likened a young bride to a ‘sweet apple’ or (gluku’malon). Insert breast images here, or fat goats, and add a little Anthony Hopkins’ Silence of the Lambs slither sound with fava beans here. Here, have some chianti. Better yet, have some tinto riojo and gorgeous ruby hued membrillo quince paste with your manchego cheese from La Mancha. The Spanish word for quince paste, or cheese, membrillo comes from mimbre, for its wicker-like canes, and the word marmalade comes from the Portuguese marmalao.

According to Wikipedia, “The fruit was known to the Akkadians, who called it supurgillu; Arabic سفرجل al safarjal"quinces" (collective plural), as well as in Judea of Israel during the Mishnaic era where it was called perishin (פרישין collective plural, or sing. prish); quince flourished in the heat of the Mesopotamian plain, where apples did not. It was cultivated from an archaic period around the Mediterranean. Some ancients called the fruit "golden apples"The Greeks associated it with Cydonia (Kydonia) on Crete, as the "Cydonian pome" while the Romans called it strythion.

Enter Eris, the goddess of discord, who wasn’t invited to the wedding party hosted by Zeusy-baby. So she crashed it and brought an “apple.” The quince, a potent fertility drug, was Mother Earth’s wedding gift to Hera, literally food of the gods. Upon the quince was the inscription καλλίστῃ (kallistēi, "To/for the fairest one"), thus fomenting a brawl between three reigning goddesses, Hera, Athena, and Aphrodite—which ignited the Trojan War. Aphrodite won the beauty contest, by the way.

True quince was also used as an aromatic room freshener Wikipedia

Back to that harbinger of spring, those ornamental blood-red Japanese flowering pseudo-quinces in the garden, are not quinces at all, but they do look alike—except for their tiny serrated leaves. Quinces, that is, Cydonia oblonga, with their broad pear-like leaves, are often conflated with the three Southeast Asian ornamental flowering Pseudocydonia “quince” species in the genus Chaenomeles. 

Pseudo Japanese flowering “quince,”  Wikipedia

If you mixed up the two genera, don’t feel bad. The reason why I wrote this blog post is because a San Marcos native nursery man insisted that they were closely related species—nae, he called them mere varieties. As in one species. Since my childhood memories were so closely associated with true quince, I had to set him straight. I tend to get cranky when people don’t know the difference between genus and species. Especially a nurseryman. May you eat raw quince.

See, real quinces are orphans, they are their own sole genus and species, no close cousins whatsoever to speak of.  When you’re the only species in your genus, that’s something to crow about, evolutionarily speaking. It’s either good news, or really bad news. As in the last of your kind.

The large five-petaled flowers of the true quince, like showoff apple blossoms, tend to be white, or veined with a pale pink blush—kind of like the Chinese pseudo flowering quince. They even have similar looking fruit to the pseudo-quince. Five seeds in a star pattern like an apple or a pear cut crosswise. Blame it on a common ancestor of the Maleae tribe in the Rosaceae family. Call it convergent evolution. A divine model for a divine fruit. Not to mention the Judgement of Paris. You do know that Helen bribed Paris with a quince.

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  True quince blossoms, Manfred Heyde Wikipedia

Links to some of my foodie bloggies

I was compiling a bloglist of foodways for my latest food blog, expecting to find a mere handful. Instead, I found 25 blog posts, and when I compiled a growing list, for some inexplicable reason, Blogger erratically erased the correct links. I had to redo this list too many times to count. I no sooner fixed three dead links, then when I reformatted it, other links went wonky. And so on. For every step forward, I retreated two steps. It took me most of the day to undo the damage. Shame on you Blogger for once again making what once was a relatively simple task into a logistical nightmare. Ditto that with your dogged changing of spelling in the search window. Foodways is a real word. The links are in no particular order, but are mostly chronological in nature. I'm sure I missed a few.

A note on native foodways in the British Isles vs. foods introduced by Romans
Wild Apples

Defiant Fruitcakes

A note on Medieval spices

A note on Medieval turnspit dogs

Folklore: Foodways, saying, a food thief/ house sprite
Folklore: Foodways/ How to make Irish Soda Bread

Folklore: Irish Soda Bread Recipe
Corned beef & cabbage came out of Hell's Kitchen

Groundcherries by any other name 

On Jack O Lanterns and squashes 
Lemon Meringue Merengue
Elderberry Whine

Baking a Cake on Bastille Day

Writing down the bone soup

Recipe for bone broth
Tea vs Chai—if by Land, or Sea
Tapping trees: a soggy story
Arbutus, Madroño, or a Strawberry Tree by any other name
Irish salmon
Naked man in a filbert bush, and spotted dick

Shrove Tuesday Pancakes

Fat Tuesday pancakes

Huckleberries

SEXING THE GENDER OF BELL PEPPERS (drawing)

(found poem)

Flip the bell pepper on end
to reveal its gender.
Count the shiny orbs.
If it has four, it’s female,
full of seeds, but sweeter,
better for eating raw.
If it has three humps, it’s male,
best saved for the stewing pot.

4/19/20

A note on Medieval turnspit dogs

A dog at work inside a wheel near the ceiling;
Remarks on a Tour to North and South Wales (1800). —Wiki

An administrator of Facebook’s British Medieval History group—got his knickers in a twist, and got more than a little heavy-handed with me, he blocked me, then threw me in Facebook jail, after deleting all my posts, because I posted a comment on Vera Moraes’ query about medieval pets. The reason cited was because my mere mentioning of turnspit dogs, was outside of the BMH timeframe, cutoff date is 1485— but here’s the thing, they probably were used during the Middle Ages.

The first ever book on the history of native canines in the British isles, was published in 1565, well out of the medieval timeframe, and was translated from the Latin in 1570. How long it took to research and write the book was not recorded, but one could surmise it was the work of a lifetime, or decades in the making. If so, then it was compiled close to the end of the Medieval era. 

The publication date of said dog book doesn’t mean that turnspit dogs were only used from 1570 onward. The book’s subject, native dogs of Britain, would’ve been quite specialized. Printed books were still a novelty item of the wealthy classes, who could afford them. And a book on native dogs of Britain, even more specialized. Question is, WHY was the book compiled?

Just like the Middle English manuscripts, Forme of Cury, and To the King's Taste, books were published long after the original recipes had been invented—because the information was in danger of being forever lost. I suspect an influx of foreign (French) dogs were flooding the market, to the point where British breeds were in danger of being lost. Imported spaniels (Spanish dogs) were mentioned as well.

The book mentions turnspit dogs among other types of dogs. But I’d bet a roast beef dinner that turnspit dogs were used much earlier. People weren’t dumb. If someone could design a grist mill (ca. 800 BC), using a stream, a windmill, or horse/ox/donkey/goat-drawn wheel or thresher, or build a spinning wheel, a standard household item ubiquitous across Europe in the 1300s (earliest drawing of one 1035 AD), they could easily envision a dog in a turnspit cage. The model was at hand. In fact, when I saw engravings of mechanical turnspits, I thought they were spinning wheels stored on the walls.

Linnaeus dubbed the turnspit dog its own breed, Canis vertigus. But by the 18th c., “The breed was lost, since it was considered to be such a lowly and common dog that no record was effectively kept of it. Some sources consider the turnspit dog a kind of Glen of Imaal Terrier, while others make it a relative of the Welsh Corgi.” —Wiki

My Berkeley Medieval Studies professor, Dr. Dan Melia, astutely pointed out that early books were written to preserve what was in danger of being lost. Not just for piety or pleasure. This comment was in reference to a segue to the Irish epics—they weren’t invented in the Middle Ages, they were transcribed during that time because the stories were in danger of being lost due to societal upheaval—namely the arrival of the Vikings. Different concept. They weren’t written in a void but they certainly codified what came before.

Dog were owned by all classes, not just the wealthy. Anyone who had a farm had dogs to work hogs, sheep, cattle. And ratters were very important to the miller! Also, dogs were employed as draft/draught animals, how we get the term dogcart. The ornate grill structure used to lay and corral the burning logs were called firedogs. And the iron turnspit architecture was referred to as dogs.

Both the Irish youth-hero Fionn, and his Arthurian Welsh counterpart, Gwion/Taliesin, were left in charge of turning the salmon of wisdom on a spit.

The fisherman took a salmon of great size and beauty, which they placed at the fire to broil, leaving it in charge of Fionn, who was to take care that it did not burn, on pain of losing his head. ...Sparks flew from the fire, which raised a blister on the fish. —Taliesin, Or, The Bards and Druids of Britain: A Translation D.H Nash, 1858

Fionn applied his thumb to the scorched part of the fish, then stuck his thumb in his mouth, and was “gifted with prophecy and foreknowledge.” A similar tale follows in the story of Gwion/Taliesin. The name Gwion is a Welsh cognate of Fionn. In the Norse Saga of Sigurd, Sigurd was in charge of roasting the dragon’s heart. The boy heroes all disingenuously gain arcane knowledge and the gift of forethought. Sigurd gained knowledge of the language of the birds.

These medieval fragments merely serve to illustrate that turnspit were indeed used and young boys were employed for the mundane task. Knowing how young boys were ingeniously quick to shirk their chores, it’s a short leap of faith from turnspit boy to turnspete dog.

Hot flash

Once I fondled a festive potted ornamental Thai pepper-plant hidden amid the pointsettias. Not only did I touch both eyelids, but I rubbed my upper lip, then stuck a finger up my nose—all this before I’d left the checkout line at the grocery store. A true sob story. I looked like a red raccoon. A gift that kept right on giving, I might add, as I didn’t know how to neutralize the volatile oils. Duly filed under Stupid things I’ve done in public....

A note on Medieval spices

The early Medieval era, when the Irish epics were first recorded, wasn’t quite the gastronomic desert we imagine it today. Sorrel sauce, and sour verjuice was used to flavor meats, as were rose hips, sloe plums, bitter cherries, crabapples, pears, huckleberries, bilberries, bog berries (a type of cranberry), and juniper berries; coriander seeds were used, as well as caraway, fennel, and mustard seeds; lots of pot herbs were used, such as young tart pine needles, heather, woodruff, and many types of mint—also mushrooms, garlic and onions. Rose petals were a popular dessert flavoring too.

Caraway seeds and greens were used, both as a spice and a pot herb. Any Roman potherb or spice that was introduced and easily grown in Britain would also have been readily available. Main spices used during the British Middle Ages were introduced during the Crusades, but some were introduced to Britain by the Romans. Roman cooks traditionally used aromatic herbs (dill, coriander, cumin, chervil, laurel, carrot, parsnip, lovage, rue, anise, mint, mustard, oregano, savory, myrtle...). I would imagine rosemary was also used as well as geranium and carnation, or pinks. Spices included pepper, silphium or laser, saffron, turmeric, cardamom, ginger and nard. Cinnamon was considered a medicine. I imagine clove was also a medicine, as was sugar!

I once hosted a medieval Celtic feast for my final project at UC Berkeley, using traditional ingredients. Toasting the oats for shortbread produced a strong vanillan flavor, as would using fresh pine needles, etc. We discovered that leached ashes were also used as leavening agent, when eggs weren’t available. Kind of a primitive baking soda, or powder. (See pearl ash, or potash—there's a reason why it's called potash!)

The medieval Irish roasted their oatmeal, and then flattened the hard grains in a saddle quern (think rolled oats) before making their famous griddle cakes. Roasting the oatmeal imparted a strong vanillan flavor. Just because we think of vanilla as a modern flavor, it doesn’t mean the compound itself didn’t exist in other foodstuffs. Epic hero Cú Chullain roasted his oatmeal on an iron griddle for his oatcakes before going into battle. Medieval Britons primarily used rose water, etc., and later saffron, as a custard flavoring.

In Germany and Scandinavia, during the end of the Middle Ages, powdered deer antler was also used as a leavening agent (ammonium carbonate) for hard cookies such as Springerle, Liebkuchen, and Hartshorn. (Leavening could also be made by distilling hair or decomposed urine.) Apparently the ammonia odor as they were cooking was memorable. Cookies as strong medicine....

Contrary to popular belief, Essex was not the original place where saffron was cultivated. Greece, maybe. It comes from the Middle East, especially Iran. Saffron is a Persian word. Saffron was the costliest of all medieval spices, more costly than sugar. The English word "saffron" probably stems from the 12th-century Old French term safran, from the Latin—safranum, from the Arabic za'farān, from the Persian word zarparan meaning "flower with golden petals".

Saffron as a color is also mentioned in medieval Ireland as a dyestuff, but other plants were also used to achieve that color dye, including gorse and brassica. The color itself, regardless of its plant origin, was called saffron, which is a well-attested classical reference. It doesn’t refer to the edible crocus sativus, as the edible crocus is not native to Britain. And it sounds like crocus wasn’t introduced until ca. 1560, when the bulb first appeared in the Netherlands. It didn’t become a common garden plant in Northern Europe until ca. the 1620s.

Speaking of medicine, you can get a fair indication of spices used during the Middle Ages by looking at the medicinal cures from the Middle Ages...Rosa Goidelica. (now I can't find a reference to it....I know it exists as I once spent an afternoon reading it in the Rare Books basement of the Doe Library at UC Berkeley). One of my favorite recipes for a toothache, eat a cinnamon-infused chicken—but it must also be eaten at the crossroads. Apparently saffron rice was another medicinal favorite. Wherever  did they get the rice from? That sort of dates it, timewise, along with noodles—to the age of Marco Polo.

Any spice popular in Rome would’ve made its way into the cooking pots of Britain. The Greeks and Romans were aware of cardamon (a member of the ginger family) and used it as a perfume, and it was well known in Egypt and the Middle East. The Indian spice could’ve been reintroduced by way of the Vikings several centuries after the Romans pulled out of Britain.

Groundcherries by any other name

CNN posted a slouchy article on the process of genetically modifying groundcherries, a species of tomatillo, for commercial harvesting. I think the headline, Groundcherries, the latest modified fruit scientists want you to try, was designed to get a rise out of readers. Anything for a few hits on Facebook. If the header didn't grab your attention, the synopsis was even lamer: They taste like pineapple, but also like vanilla. They're "tropical" but also a bit like a tomato. A bit like a tomato? they're such close cousins, they're practically Irish twins.

I’d chalk the article up to uninformed journalism, replete with bad headlines, or bad tastebuds, or both. Of course, the CNN journalist Arman Azad might not have had anything to do with the epic headline fail. Could be a wonky editor. I can't answer for their tastebuds. Vanilla? Really?

Of course, most Facebook readers lost their collective minds. If the headline hadn’t read “modified” would all the howling Facebook readers have had such an adverse knee-jerk reaction? One could almost hear all those knees smacking their owners in the chin. Don't knock out all your teeth in the process.

Groundcherries (Physalis peruviana) are not some kind of new frankenfruit. Modified does not mean inter-species spliced GMOs, no foreign fish, or alien fungus genes inserted into your tomatoes or groundcherries. People have been domesticating tomatillo species for millennia. If anything, they should be dubbed heirloom plants—even though they're considered to be weeds the world over.

Cape gooseberries, or Inca berries, Physalis peruviana, take some time to ripen.—Wiki

The CNN article nattered on about the significance of scientific development of a more compact groundcherry bush with larger fruit, and more fruit clusters. Talk about burying the lead sentence! If the CNN journalist had merely called the process “domestication” then there probably would have been no flappy Facebook furor. Talk about the five Ws of journalism gone awry. Never bury the lead.

The real problem is developing a commercially viable crop, so that Physalis peruviana can be harvested and shipped. It's just not commercially viable as is—wild grown. Harvesting, shipping, etc., is problematic, as the big rambling bush likes to flop about and lay down on the ground, and randomly drop its fruit—hence the name—groundcherries.

Cape gooseberries, Inca berries Physalis peruviana, yellow ones are the sweetest.

As to gene manipulation, any food you eat has already been modified. Call it domestication, cultivation, or breeding—whether by natural selection, farmers, monks, or scientists... Everything we eat has been modified, unless it's completely wild.