SC - Qata'if -- duck and bread

[david friedman]

> What evidence do you have to support this supposition? The fact that we do 
> not have written amounts in extant recipes does not indicate that period 
> cooks did not know what amounts were meant. It indicates, IMO, that period 
> cooks knew exactly what amounts to use and therefore saw no need to write 
> them down.

Wouldn't it depend on the recipe? Sometimes you do things by measurement,
sometimes it is by add, mix, look/taste, add, mix, etc. I would suspect
that some of the time people knew exactly (for instance, if you dump rice
in a pot, then add water, they knew exactly how far up the water should
come to be right), and sometimes they did it by taste/look. I suspect that
that keyword 'enough' may indicate that people weren't thinking conciously
in terms of quantities. However, when measurements are not indicated, that
may well have resulted in others, who used the cookbook later, producing
varied results. I'm sure each cook was fairly consistent in his own
cooking, but if there are no measurements written down, the interpretation
probably varied between cooks. 

Of course, we don't know what they considered the range for 'enough', but
I think it's silly to think that other cooks knew 'exactly' how much the
first cook thought was 'enough'. And even if they did, some people
probably liked their armored turnips with more or less cheesy or spicy,
their fritters more or less poofy with yeast.

Jadwiga Zajaczkowa, mka Jennifer Heise	      jenne at tulgey.browser.net
disclaimer: i speak for no-one and no-one speaks for me.

" Oh, Adam was a gardener, and God who made him sees 
That half a proper gardener's work is done upon his knees, 
So when your work is finished, you can wash your hands and pray
For the Glory of the Garden, that it may not pass away!" -- Kipling