SC - Culinary Demo Ideas

[Lee-Gwen Booth]

> Elaine Koogler wrote:
> 
>     ---------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> Subject: Re: A Soup for the Qan...revisited
> Date: Tue, 11 Jul 2000 14:22:38 -0700
> From: "Paul D. Buell" <tbuell2 at home.com>
> To: "Elaine Koogler" <ekoogler at chesapeake.net>
<snip>
> I will recheck when I get a moment, think it is, in fact, soda. Not as
> pure as the modern stuff. But no, this can't be the earliest such
> reference. Soda was used in Arabic breadmaking long before. I even
> mention use of baura, a kind of soda, in chapter 1. Probably this is
> not a Chinese feature.
> 
> Paul

What is interesting is that there are a fair number of modern southern
Chinese steamed bread recipes that do use a combination of yeast and
soda leavenings.  Whether this is an offshoot of the above tradition or
something independently conceived (Southern foodways being a bit of a
different animal than the ones portrayed in the Yuan medical texts...),
I couldn't say.

The soda may be sodium carbonate, sold commercially as "washing soda",
but, AFAIK, no more of a health hazard than bicarbonate of soda. Its use
has a long history in Roman recipes, too.

Adamantius  
- -- 
Phil & Susan Troy

troy at asan.com