SC - Andelusian cookbooks

[david friedman]

At 9:13 AM -0400 10/15/98, LrdRas at aol.com wrote:
>In a message dated 10/15/98 3:21:35 AM Eastern Daylight Time, ddfr at best.com
>writes:
>
><< no period
> North African cookbooks unless you count recipes in Andalusian cookbooks.
>
> David/Cariadoc >>
>
>Here's a question for you Your Grace. I read your statement above and went
>rushing off to check al-Baghdadi. NOT  North African bt any means. However, I
>was wondering if you include this manuscript in your definition of
>'Andalusian'? I had thought that it was actually from the Middle East as
>opposed to being from Spain.

You are correct, and I do not include it. I was thinking of _Manuscrito
Anonimo_ and another 13th c. one that is not available in English.

>The connection with North Africa is that it contains a good number of recipes
>that are very similar to a modern Ethiopian cookbook and Egyptian cookbook
>that I have. Would it be possible to extrapolate a connection or is the
>simalarrity merely a matter of cultural infusion over the centuries?

I suspect that there was a lot of influence right across al Islam. The
Andalusian cookbook has at least one recipe attributed, by name, to Ibraham
ibn al Mahdi, who is Middle Eastern, and the _Ain I Akbari_, which is 13th
c. Mughal, has at least some recipe names in common with Middle Eastern and
Andalusian. The modern cuisine that Elizabeth and I noticed as similar to
period Middle Eastern was Afghan.

The problem, of course, is that although a random middle eastern recipe
might have been cooked in North Africa in period, it also might not. I
assumed that one someone refers to a "North African" course that means
dishes that there is some special reason to identify with North Africa, not
merely dishes that are recorded elsewhere and might have been cooked in
North Africa. _Manuscrito Anonimo_ contains some such dishes--for instance,
one whose name comes from the name of a group of Berber tribes.

>I have also been unsuccessful in finding a translator for the copy of the 16th
>century manuscript that I was gifted with by another university friend so I
>have run up against a wall with regards to tracing the changes in cooking
>styles in the ME. Are their any relatively inexpensive courses available
>through whatever means for a person to learn Arabic as this appers to be my
>only recourse to getting this manual translated. My background is ,
>unfortunately, entirely centered around the Romance languages. :-(

I don't know about courses--I don't read Arabic either, unfortunately. Try
posting requests for volunteers here and on the Rialto. My current
volunteer translator of Arabic keeps entering crown tournaments and winning
them, which is a distraction; some people have no sense of priorities.

David/Cariadoc
http://www.best.com/~ddfr/


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