SC - Flavoured oils query

[Stephen Bloch]

Ras wrote:

> Well, not to disappoint you but it appears as if the lubricants of choice
> based on extant recipes were as follows: British Isles, Northern France-
> butter; Germany and Teutonic countries- lard; Italy, South France, Spain,
> Portugal and the mid-east- olive oil.

Katerine made some corrections to the "British Isles - butter" part.  I
shall point out that in the cooking of the Arabic-speaking world (which,
being a literate culture, has left us more cookbooks from longer ago
than has Christian Europe), the primary lubricant seems to be rendered
from the tail of the fat-tailed sheep (see the notes on ingredients in
the _Miscellany_).  Butter was also known, and the _Manuscrito Anonimo_
points out that "some people love it, and add it to bread, while others
cannot stand even to smell it."  _Manuscrito anonimo_ goes on to say:

    Butter is not employed in kitchen dishes because it is only used
    in the various kinds of rafis [see below] and in some cakes, and
    in similar foods of [made by?] women.  It is needed for its oil,
    over which it quickly forms a dry crust, and for spicy or
    vinegary things so that it may cut their sharpness and make them
    soft and smooth, and do them great benefit.

Most of the recipes calling for butter in this cookbook are for a class
of dishes called _rafis_, which appear to all be sweetened, yeast-raised
breadlike or cakelike dishes, cooked in a pan (not baked in an oven).
Butter is also used occasionally for greasing meats to be oven-roasted,
and for making puff-pastry dough, e.g. for "sambusak", which I think is
a cognate for "samosa".

Oil (I've been assuming it means olive oil, without much evidence) also
appears frequently in the _Manuscrito anonimo_, often interchangeably
with butter or animal grease.

					mar-Joshua ibn-Eleazar ha-Shalib
                                                 Stephen Bloch
                                           sbloch at panther.adelphi.edu
					 http://www.adelphi.edu/~sbloch/
                                        Math/CS Dept, Adelphi University
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