Definition of "zucchino"

After a prolonged session with a cookbook, she selected two or three recipes she considered promising, went to her grocer’s, and read off her list of ingredients: a quarter pound of white seedless grapes, three oranges, two tart apples, three cloves, the breast of a chicken, a can of pigs’ feet, a spring onion, a zucchino, three leeks, and a half pint of dried black-eyed peas. The grocer paled as he listened. “Lady,” he said, “what are you making—a painting?”

1947, The New Yorker, volume 23, page 21

Two members of another family became ill after eating a zucchino—a marrow-like plant grown in their garden; a bitter ether-soluble substance was extracted from a sample of the vegetable (Frizelle 1961).

1962, Monthly Bulletin of the Ministry of Health and Public Health Laboratory Service, page 188

A zucchino is a small marrow, but there can be no connection with Shelley’s ‘The Zucca’, which was not drafted until 1821.

1986, Keats-Shelley Review, page 87