Italian horticultural and culinary records of summer squash (Cucurbita pepo, Cucurbitaceae) and emergence of the zucchini in 19th-century Milan

Abstract

Background and aims: Summer squash, the young fruits of Cucurbita pepo, are a common, high-value fruit vegetable. Of the summer squash, the zucchini, C. pepo subsp. pepo Zucchini Group, is by far the most cosmopolitan. The zucchini is easily distinguished from other summer squash by its uniformly cylindrical shape and intense colour. The zucchini is a relatively new cultivar-group of C. pepo, the earliest known evidence for its existence having been a description in a book on horticulture published in Milan in 1901. For this study, Italian-language books on agriculture and cookery dating from the 16th to 19th centuries have been collected and searched in an effort to follow the horticultural development and culinary use of young Cucurbita fruits in Italy.

Findings: The results indicate that Cucurbita fruits, both young and mature, entered Italian kitchens by the mid-16th century. A half-century later, round and elongate young fruits of C. pepo were addressed as separate cookery items and the latter had largely replaced the centuries-old culinary use of young, elongate bottle gourds, Lagenaria siceraria Allusion to a particular, extant cultivar of the longest fruited C. pepo, the Cocozelle Group, dates to 1811 and derives from the environs of Naples. The Italian diminutive word zucchini arose by the beginning of the 19th century in Tuscany and referred to small, mature, desiccated bottle gourds used as containers to store tobacco. By the 1840s, the Tuscan word zucchini was appropriated to young, primarily elongate fruits of C. pepo The Zucchini Group traces its origins to the environs of Milan, perhaps as early as 1850. The word zucchini and the horticultural product zucchini arose contemporaneously but independently. The results confirm that the Zucchini Group is the youngest of the four cultivar-groups of C. pepo subsp. pepo but it emerged approximately a half-century earlier than previously known.

Keywords: Cocozelle; Cucurbita pepo; Italian cookery; Italian horticulture; Lagenaria siceraria; Summer squash; Zucchini; courgette; gourd.

Fig. 1.

Schematic representations of fruits from each of the eight edible-fruited cultivar-groups of Cucurbita pepo (Paris, 1986).

Fig. 2.

Young fruits of Cucurbita pepo, one from each edible-fruited cultivar-group. Left to right, top row, subsp. texana: Acorn, Straightneck, Crookneck, Scallop. Left to right, bottom row, subsp. pepo: Pumpkin, Vegetable Marrow, Cocozelle, Zucchini.

Fig. 3.

One mature fruit from each of the eight edible-fruited cultivar-groups of Cucurbita pepo. Top left: Pumpkin; bottom left: Vegetable Marrow; left to right: Cocozelle, Zucchini, Acorn; at right, top to bottom: Scallop, Crookneck, Straightneck.

Fig. 4.

Long, edible-fruited bottle gourds, Lagenaria siceraria, Italian cucuzzi, zucche, for sale at Pagani Nocera Market, southern Italy, 21 July 2009.

Fig. 5.

Marketing in Italy of Cucurbita moschata: at left, young fruits at Ventimiglia, north western Italy, 10 July 2009; and, at right, mature fruits at Pagani Nocera, southern Italy, 21 July 2009.

Fig. 6.

Marketing in Italy of Cucurbita pepo. At the Pagani Nocera Market, southern Italy, 21 July 2009: top left, cocozelle squash with attached flowers; top right, male flowers; centre, zucchini squash (without flowers). At Ventimiglia, north-western Italy, 10 July 2009: bottom, cocozelle squash with attached flowers.

Fig. 7.

Young fruits of Italian cultivars of summer squash, Cucurbita pepo. (A and B) The cocozelle ‘San Pasquale’ (Luciano Pignataro Wineblog, Naples, and Sgaravatti, Pergine Valdarno, respectively); (C) the crookneck ‘Rugosa Friulana’ (Franchi Sementi, Grassbio); (D) the cocozelle ‘Striato d’Italia’ (Franchi); (E) the summer pumpkin ‘Tondo Chiaro di Toscana’ (Sais–Società Agricola Italiana Sementi, Cesena); (F) the cocozelle ‘Romanesco’ (Sgaravatti); (G) the cocozelle ‘Alberello sel. Valery’ (Semiorto Sementi, Sarno); (H) the cocozelle ‘Lungo Bianco di Sicilia’ (Franchi); (I) the vegetable marrow ‘Bolognese’ (Franchi); (J and K) the zucchini ‘Nano Verde di Milano’ (Semiorto Sementi and Fratelli Ingegnoli, Milano, respectively).