SC - Kidnapping Adamantius- was Neat website

[Stefan li Rous]

Bear said:
> It's just the earliest reference which I have encountered, and I must admit
> ignorance in the matter of Arabic culinary history.  I am also making the
> assumption the soda was being used as a chemical leaven, rather than being
> included for some other purpose.  That assumption may be erroneous.
>  
> In European baking, the first reference of which I know to a possible
> chemical leaven occurs in the late 16th or early 17th Centuries.  They may
> not have been common until the 19th Century, but I haven't examined enough
> recipes from the intervening three centuries to form a solid opinion.

If you can dig up that referance, I would love to hear more. From what I
thought I'd heard here, I'd been telling folk the nineteenth century
for the first baking powder or other chemical leavening. While I
understand that referance may be an exception rather than a common
use, I'd still like to have the referance.

- -- 
Lord Stefan li Rous    Barony of Bryn Gwlad    Kingdom of Ansteorra
Mark S. Harris             Austin, Texas           stefan at texas.net
**** See Stefan's Florilegium files at:  http://www.florilegium.org ****