baklava recipe (was Re: SC - Help with Cooking period Italian food.)

[david friedman]

Hrolf Hrolfsen apparently wrote, about Baklava:

>"The recipe is easy.   As for documentation - someone else seems to have my
>recipe books.  Try Min or Lorix as the most likely culprits.  In fact you
>can easily document the existence of baklava by finding early collections of
>Mullah Nasrudin stories (which date from the 13th century).  There are
>several which involve baklava by name as it was his favourite dessert.

1. Do we know whether "baklava" (in the modern arabic form)  is in 
the 13th c. original? If not,  "baklava" might be simply the 
translator's guess at the nearest modern equivalent. Indeed, are 
there any surviving 13th c. Nasrudin stories (i.e. ones we have in 
the form they were written down then), or is that merely a conjecture 
about when the stories we now have originated?

2. Even if the original said "baklava," without a recipe we can't 
tell if it is what we now call "baklava." "Harisa" is a very common 
medieval Islamic dish--and has almost nothing in common with two 
modern middle eastern dishes that have the same name. Or compare 
medieval gingerbrede with modern gingerbread. Or compare modern 
halvah with hulwa in period.

3.  I am reasonably sure that none of the three medieval Islamic 
cookbooks that I know reasonably well has a recipe for what we call 
baklava. There are recipes that produce lots of thin layers of dough 
(I'm thinking of Musamanna, which I made yesterday), but it isn't 
made the way filo is made. There are lots of recipes with pastry and 
nuts and sugar and butter, but that doesn't add up to baklava.

4. On the other hand,  I think I saw something somewhere by Charles 
Perry referring to a medieval baklava--and he knows lots about 
medieval Islamic cooking.

Any chance of getting Hrolf Hrolfsen onto the list? His comment that

  " I can say that this is one of the areas of the world where methods do not
change (with the exception of the tomato / tamarind swap and the ready
adoption of chilli - which was done in period) over the centuries."

strikes me as implausible, and I would be interested in the evidence 
he has to support it. Alternatively, can someone send me his email 
address?
- -- 
David/Cariadoc
http://www.daviddfriedman.com/