SC - Baklava disputation

[Gwynydd of Culloden]

Cariadoc wrote:
>Hrolf Hrolfsen apparently wrote,:

Actually it is Hrolf Herjolfssen. [to be fair, this was my spelling error -
Gwynydd *hanging head in shame*]


>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?


I do not pretend to have the time to do much original research, nor to I
read Arabic, Persian, or Kurdish (yet).  I do remember reading a book in the
uni library which claimed to contain stories that were written in period.
If I have time (which is unlikely in the near future) I will try and find it
again.

>2. Even if the original said "baklava," without a recipe we can't
>tell if it is what we now call "baklava."

Very true. It happens to be a dish I (and indeed my Barony) are very fond
of.  Going on my memories, I have decided to use it.

>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.
I agree completely.  But then there are major gaps in Western cookbooks as
well - dishes we know they cooked (such as many of the sauces) - but were so
common that no-one wrote them down.

In reply to my:
>  " 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?

Only my observations that, almost every time I have actually looked at a
period recipe (mainly from your collection) and compared it a modern recipe
from a good source, I have had to say "That looks like a fair redaction".
Whilst I am experienced as a researcher (being in the final stages of my PhD
and with a much cited Honours paper on the SCA under my belt and a stack of
published papers in SCA journals), I have not done extensive research on
cooking.  I have done so on the origins of foods (thus the comments on
tamarind and chilli).
lenehan at our.net.au


>The recipe quoted by Hrolf is from p218, The Complete Middle Eastern
>Cookbook, by Tess Mallos (Landsdowne 1979), and called baklawa be'aj. No
>date or references are given.
You could well be right.

Giles de Laval wrote:
>Hrolf's assertion ... is *arrant rubbish*. Please pardon my bluntness, but
I get *very* sick of
>people making this statement about Middle Eastern culture, despite the fact
>that it has been proven wrong again and again.


I did not make this assertion about the culture.  It would be wrong.  I made
it about the food.  I have simply noted that, when I have looked at period
recipes, they appear to be very similar to the modern.

Hrolf