SC - CAWL CENNIN CYMRAEG - WELSH LAMB STEW WITH LEEKS

[david friedman]

At 7:46 PM -0400 8/30/00, Elysant at aol.com wrote:

>We believe Cawl to be quite an ancient dish.  It is traditionally eaten on
>March 1st each year in Wales as a Saint David's day supper meal, ...


>Modern varieties traditionally have the root vegetables that we see in the
>recipe that Phillipa posted.  I believe it is not too much of a stretch of
>the imagination to think that older versions of Cawl might have had lamb,
>leeks, and perhaps whichever root vegetables were available at the time in it
>(which if true, might make it one of the earliest stews with meat and
>vegetables together in it in Europe).   Unfortunately there are no Welsh
>period recipe manuscripts yet discovered (that I know of anyway), so I sadly
>can't verify any of this - so Cawl has to stay as traditional vs period right
now.

How about period mentions of Welsh food? Are there any in Geraldus 
Cambriensis? Elsewhere? Even if you don't have a recipe, you might 
have a reference, either to the name of the dish or to its 
composition.

If you don't have either, then your "stretch of the imagination" is a 
larger stretch than I am inclined to go along with, since there is no 
evidence to support it and at least a little (the lack of that sort 
of stew in the early cuisines that we do have from that part of the 
world) against it. Four hundred years is plenty of time for a dish to 
acquire an aura of immemorable age.
- -- 
David/Cariadoc
http://www.daviddfriedman.com/