[Sca-cooks] taro, ginger beer etc.

[Terry Decker]

Taro appears to originate in SE Asia and spread into India about 5000 BCE. 
It spread from Asia to Polynesia and New Guinea and Africa in pre historic 
times.  It is recorded as being cultivate in Egypt by Herodotus. and shows 
up in later writings including Apicius.  DNA evidence suggests that the New 
World taro is related to the Polynesian.  There's not a lot of information 
about the cultivation and use of taro in the Eastern Mediterranean.

For a brief but informative article on taro try, Vaneker, Karin. "From Poi 
to Fufu:  the Fermentation of Taro," Cured, Smoked and Fermented: 
Proceedings of the Oxford Symposium on Food and Cooking, 2010, pp. 352-364; 
Oxford Symposium, 2011. 
http://books.google.com/books?id=OTxvBQAAQBAJ&pg=PT353&lpg=PT353&dq=pliny+taro&source=bl&ots=-CGDgUZY2T&sig=tBiV-s5_nokD3vPeSwIwmw-U6zQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj7r9X73ZDSAhVmxVQKHbN_D_kQ6AEIHTAA#v=onepage&q=pliny%20taro&f=false

Bear

Where and when was taro used in medieval times? I have only a small file on 
taro in the Florilegium,
taro-msg (4K) 2/10/14 Use of the taro plant in period.
and my knowledge of taro is minimal, mostly from grade school social studies 
classes. I'd love to get more info, an article, bibliography etc. to put in 
the Florilegium.

Thanks,
    Stefan
--------
THLord Stefan li Rous    Barony of Bryn Gwlad    Kingdom of Ansteorra
   Mark S. Harris           Austin, Texas 
StefanliRous at gmail.comhttp://www.linkedin.com/in/marksharris
**** See Stefan's Florilegium files at:  http://www.florilegium.org ****