SC - Qata'if -- duck and bread

[TG]

<< Somebody wrote:
>What I was trying to say: the basic quata'if looks more like a dessert
than a chicken dish to me.<
This seems to me to be a modern approach. (...) >>

French "dessert" was used by Elkhadem in his translation of Ibn-Butlan's
heading (11th century); Rodinson used French "Des douceurs et
pâtisseries" for chapter VII of the Wusla (around 1200?), where quata'if
is mentioned (139f.); let me repeat, that he also said that quata'if was
a "gâteau célèbre" (his article is written in French), giving half a
dozen references to old and new authors; Heine mentions his rendering of
the at-Tujibi recipe under the heading "Süßspeisen" ('sweet').

Perhaps, _sweet_, indicating only important ingredients, not a position
in a sequence, might have been a better word to express my guess, made
from the sources I mentioned.

<< I'm not convinced the period European recipes have a distinction
between sweet and main meat dishes, much less Middle Eastern modern or
period. >>

Whatever generalizations and whatever descriptive terms you prefer, take
care that the authors/recipes quoted above and elsewhere fit in.

Thomas