SC - lime or sorbet, but not lime sorbet

[Nanna Rögnvaldardóttir]

Brighid wrote:
>I may be rushing in where Laurels fear to tread, and I have never studied
>Latin, but the online Latin dictionary I consulted at
>http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/resolveform?lang=Latin
>says:
>[once] sorbitium, ii, n. [id.], = sorbitio, a drink, draught, Ser. Samm.
>                     21, 360 dub. (al. sorbitio).
>
>Of course, that puts us no nearer to knowing what the consistency of
>said drink should be...


The word sorbet, according to The Gourmet´s Guide, was borrowed into English
from French in the sixteenth century (sherbet, on the other hand, comes from
Turkish or Persian); both go back to Arabic sharbat, drinks. Syrup is a
related word.

Elizabeth David says, in Harvest of the Cold Months: "... in
sixteenth-century France the term sorbets, if used at all (it doesn´t appear
in dictionaries until much later) would have implied simply syrups, pastes,
powders, lemonades and other fruit juices, sweetened and diluted with water
in the Turkish fashion, and regarded primarily as healthful, restorative
beverages." Diluted in the Turkish fashion means mixed or whipped with snow
or ice but these drinks weren´t always cooled. However, there is evidence
that Paris was supplied with ice and snow for cooling drinks by the 1570s,
if not earlier.

She also quotes the travel book of Pierre Belon, published in 1553, where he
says that in Turkey there are special buildings for the storage of snow and
ice which, all the summer, was sold to cool "the beverages they call
sorbets".

Which doesn´t really say much about the consistency either ...

Nanna

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