SC - Early Spanish Feast

[Philip & Susan Troy]

Robin Carroll-Mann wrote:
> 
> And it came to pass on 13 Sep 99,, that Micaylah wrote:
> 
> > I am helping do a Feast here in Ealdormere (NO I am not heading it
> > up!!) with the theme being early Spanish. I have absolutely no
> > knowledge of this time frame, nor geography.

> His Grace is probably one of the best people to consult.  Unfortunately,
> there are no surviving Spanish cookbooks -- Muslim or Christian -- from
> the very early period you are concentrating on.  The Baghdad Cookery-
> Book and the Al-Andalus cookbook are both 13th century Muslim.  The
> _Libre de sent sovi_ is 14th century Catalan Christian, and there are
> several later period cookbooks which derive from it.  If you can, I'd
> advise getting hold of a copy of _A Drizzle of Honey_, which attempts to
> reconstruct the cuisine of 15th century crypto-Jews.  It gives a fair
> amount of background detail on Spanish cuisine, and has a very lengthy
> bibliography.  (Many of the items listed are in Spanish).  Good luck with
> your project.  It sounds like an intriguing event.

According to a short article in "Du manuscrit a la table", one of
Rudolph Grewe's last projects before his untimely death was to be
published as "The Almohade Cookbook", which was to be a translation of
an early Hispano-Arabic cookery text of a couple of hundred recipes. 

What distinguished this work and particularly excited me was that Grewe
seemed to feel that this source A) was the first, and according to
implication, only, to detail a cuisine demonstrably Spanish by
geographical definition rather than simply Arabic food cooked in Spain
[i.e. olive oil, not sesame oil or butter, for the most part, etc.] and
B) shows traces of a Spanish cuisine from before the Islamic conquest of
a good chunk of Spain.

Unfortunately, Grewe died around the time of the planned publication;
it's unclear whether the piece was ever finished. It does not appear to
have been published by the forecasted publisher at the time mentioned by
Grewe in his article. As of now, I've been unable to track any of the
translation down except for the tiniest glimpse Grewe includes in his
piece for "Du manuscrit a la table".

<sigh>
  
Adamantius
- -- 
Phil & Susan Troy

troy at asan.com
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