On Fri, 11 Feb 2005 00:34:37 -0500, "mel turner"
wrote:

"Richard Wright" wrote in
message ...
A 1950s article in French describes how the corms of Arum maculatum
are prepared for food. The species is known in England as
Lords-and-ladies or Cuckoo-pint.

They are said to be prepared according to the methods used in South
America to prepare 'couac'.

Does anybody have any idea what 'couac' is, remembering the article is
in French?

I wonder whether the reference is to an unrelated plant Manihot
utilissima (manioc, yuca. cassava).

You wondered correctly, it seems.

I was guessing that they might have been referring instead to the
large tuberous aroids Xanthosoma spp. that have been cultivated
similarly to Colocasia, etc. in the American tropics [since at least
they'd be reasonably close relatives of Arum], but a Google search
[on "couac" appearing together with "Xanthosoma"] turns up just:

http://www.fao.org/documents/show_cd...E/y4586e13.htm

which says
"Cassava: a high varietal diversity for a species of major importance
in Amerindian culture

Many crops and multiple varieties of each crop are cultivated on a
parcel, supporting both intra-specific and inter-specific diversity.
This strategy of minimizing risk by cultivating a diversity of crops
and varieties in space and time enhances harvest security and promotes
diet diversity.

The central crop of the farming system is cassava (Manihot esculenta),
[snip]

Cassava is at the root of food consumption and products stemmed from
processing are numerous, such as cassava (a sort of "pancake" used
like bread), couac (flour), tapioca (to make sauce) or cachiri (bier)."

Searching again for ["couac" with "Manihot"] finds a few more links
showing the same:

http://food.oregonstate.edu/ref/cult...rica_niba.html

"POTENTIAL APPLICATIONS OF TAPIOCA FLOUR:

Traditionally, tapioca bread is baked by toasting tapioca root
pulp on a griddle and is known as cassava bread, casabe, beigu
or couac in the Caribbean (FAO, 1998)."

cheers

Thanks, Mel. I should have followed up my own hunch on Google! I since
found couac in a large French dictionary, and it too makes the cassava
connection.