SC - Re: Recipe Challenge

[Philip & Susan Troy]

Gretchen M Beck wrote:

> >> "II. ALITER PATINA VERSATILIS: nucleos, nuces fractas; torres eas et
> >> teres cum melle, pipere, liquamine, lacte et ovis. olei modicum (122)

> >Assuming that that's the original Latin above, I get something more like this:
> >
> >2. Flip-flop. Take and grind nuts and dry them.  Make the nuts smooth
> >with honey, liquamen, milk, and eggs.  <Cook> in a little olive oil.
> >
> >The first part is, pretty much, self-explanitory, though I'd have to try
> >it to get the portions.  For the second, I'd say, heat a Tbsp or so of
> >olive oil in a flat pan, pour on batter, cook until it bubbles on one
> >side, then turn and cook on the other.
> >
> Over breakfast, I came up with an alternative interpretation:
> 
> Take nuts.  Take nut flour.  Mix it together with honey, liquamen, milk,
> and eggs into a smooth batter.  Fry in olive oil.
> 
> In this interpretation, you have a nut batter with big chunks of nuts in it.

Hmmm. This is what I get for relying on someone else's translation. The
problem is that I'm no Latin scholar, and it appears that the language
in general and this recipe especially is full of terms that are open to
a certain amount of interpretation. So, looking at the "original" Latin
recipe (since the earliest known manuscript is something like eighth
century, it's questionable to use the term "original") we get something
like:

	Another Revolving Patina: nut kernels, broken nuts; parch them and
grind smooth with honey, liquamen, milk and eggs. Some oil.

I expect even Roman cooks in the first century A.D. would have produced
a number of variations on this, all well within the instructions the
recipe provides. I'm interested in the whole versatilis aspect: I'm
beginning to suspect that this _might_  mean that the batter is stirred
in the pan, like an omelette. I made this dish yesterday, using
proportions similar but not identical to the Noble Lord Ras's, and I
stirred the dish while cooking, partly because I may have made an
arbitrary decision that this dish is supposed to be an omelette, but
also because I knew that if I didn't, this dish of nuts and honey would
surely burn before the middle was cooked. I can't ascribe to the theory
that this is a sort of pancake, because if it were, then it wouldn't be
cooked in a patina. This almost certainly has to be thicker than a
pancake, and I think it would end up as a fritatta or tortilla at least
an inch or two thick. I not so sure now that the dish is ever turned out
of the pan before serving. Many other patinae apparently aren't.

This is also another example of a recipe that list ingredients and
processes without  making it clear what processes apply to what
ingredients. Mathematicians use parentheses. We have to guess, to some
extent.

Adamantius