SC - Re: Filo/phyllo--Anderson's response

Thu Aug 31 09:30:16 PDT 2000

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I just received the following from Gene Anderson regarding the question
of bean flour/paste/semolina:

Anyway, bean flour would be either soybean or mung bean flour.  Probably

mung bean. You can easily get that at Chinese markets.  It would make a
gooey substitute.  Actually, Peking cooking includes several dishes that

look an awful lot like western recipes in which bean flour (or sometimes

rice flour) has been substituted for western-style wheat flour sheets or

cakes. There are jelly rolls, for instance, made with bean flour and
sweet
bean paste instead of wheat flour and jelly.
For reconstruction purposes:  If you SCA people are doing a Chinese
feast,
go with the mung bean flour; if a central Asian feast, go for the wheat,

but probably ordinary unbleached flour if modern central Asian cooking
is
any guide; if Near East, go with ordinary wheat flour or semolina.
These
things change predictably across the continent.  It's still somewhat
unclear who used semolina when and where, though.  It's always been a
big
deal in Italy and some other areas, but its role in the Near East is
unclear.  Even modern ethnography is poor on that, let alone historic
sources.
best--Gene Anderson

Hope this helps.  As we will be doing the Central Asian/Mongol thing,
we'll probably use the flour as he suggests, though I may still
experiment with the bean paste.

I can't help but wonder if the "bean paste" in the original translation
may not be the result of transcription error.  I know that the Mongols
probably didn't write their recipes down, but it was, in all likelihood
done by a Chinese scribe or someone else.  The source that was used for
translating "A Soup for the Qan" was based upon a 1456 Ming edition in
its Szu-pu ts'ung-k'an hsü-pien reprint.  While the footnotes in "Soup"
illustrate the faithfulness of the reprint, there is still the
possibility that, in one of it's transcriptions, the words could have
taken on another meaning, simply by the misplacement of a brush stroke.

I know that a number of you are fiercely opposed to the idea of trying
to "second guess" things of this nature and prefer to read things
exactly as written, but I also know that, even where you have a language
that uses standard letters as ours does, misspellings and
misunderstandings can occur.  This possibility, I believe, is
exacerbated in Chinese because here it's just a matter of a misplaced
(or misinterpreted) brush stroke!  Though it has been many years since I
studied Chinese, I clearly remember how difficult it was to make sure
that I had each stroke of a character exactly so!  If I didn't, the
possibility of an incorrect reading of the character was quite probable.

So....in the end, I may wind up with what many will refer to as a
"period-oid" recipe rather than an accurate redaction.  But, hopefully,
I'll have something that works...and that tastes good!

Kiri

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<!doctype html public "-//w3c//dtd html 4.0 transitional//en">
<html>
I just received the following from Gene Anderson regarding the question
of bean flour/paste/semolina:
Anyway, bean flour would be either soybean or mung bean flour. 
Probably
 mung bean. You can easily get that at Chinese markets.  It would
make a
 gooey substitute.  Actually, Peking cooking includes several dishes
that
 look an awful lot like western recipes in which bean flour (or sometimes
 rice flour) has been substituted for western-style wheat flour sheets
or
 cakes. There are jelly rolls, for instance, made with bean flour and
sweet
 bean paste instead of wheat flour and jelly.
 For reconstruction purposes:  If you SCA people are doing a Chinese
feast,
 go with the mung bean flour; if a central Asian feast, go for the wheat,
 but probably ordinary unbleached flour if modern central Asian cooking
is
 any guide; if Near East, go with ordinary wheat flour or semolina. 
These
 things change predictably across the continent.  It's still somewhat
 unclear who used semolina when and where, though.  It's always
been a big
 deal in Italy and some other areas, but its role in the Near East is
 unclear.  Even modern ethnography is poor on that, let alone historic
sources.
 best--Gene Anderson
Hope this helps.  As we will be doing the Central Asian/Mongol
thing, we'll probably use the flour as he suggests, though I may still
experiment with the bean paste.
I can't help but wonder if the "bean paste" in the original translation
may not be the result of transcription error.  I know that the Mongols
probably didn't write their recipes down, but it was, in all likelihood
done by a Chinese scribe or someone else.  The source that was used
for translating "A Soup for the Qan" was based upon a 1456 Ming edition
in its Szu-pu ts'ung-k'an hsü-pien reprint.  While the
footnotes in "Soup" illustrate the faithfulness of the reprint, there is
still the possibility that, in one of it's transcriptions, the words could
have taken on another meaning, simply by the misplacement of a brush stroke.
I know that a number of you are fiercely opposed to the idea of trying
to "second guess" things of this nature and prefer to read things exactly
as written, but I also know that, even where you have a language that uses
standard letters as ours does, misspellings and misunderstandings can occur. 
This possibility, I believe, is exacerbated in Chinese because here it's
just a matter of a misplaced (or misinterpreted) brush stroke!  Though
it has been many years since I studied Chinese, I clearly remember how
difficult it was to make sure that I had each stroke of a character exactly
so!  If I didn't, the possibility of an incorrect reading of the character
was quite probable.
So....in the end, I may wind up with what many will refer to as a "period-oid"
recipe rather than an accurate redaction.  But, hopefully, I'll have
something that works...and that tastes good!
Kiri</html>

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