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

[david friedman]

Nanna writes:

>Charles Perry wrote the entry on filo (and baklava) in the Oxford Companion
>to Food and he says there, among other things:
>"The idea of making the sheets paper thin is a later development. The
>Azerbaijanis make the usual sort of baklava with 50 or so layers of filo,
>but they also make a strange, archaic pastry called Bakï pakhlavasï
>(Baku-style baklava) using ordinary noodle paste instead of filo. It
>consists of eight layers of dough separated by seven layers of sweetened
>ground nuts. This may represent the earliest form of baklava, resulting from
>the Turkish nomads adapting their concept of layered bread - developed in
>the absence of ovens - to the use of the oven and combining it with the
>usual Persian pastry filling of nuts.
>If this is so, baklava actually pre-dated filo,
...

One could describe the same evidence as showing that "Baklava" 
predates filo, which is an essential ingredient in Baklava.

In other words, if "baklava" means "the pastry we now call baklava, 
which is made using filo," then this implies that baklava is a late 
development (how late isn't clear).
- -- 
David Friedman
Professor of Law
Santa Clara University
ddfr at best.com
http://www.daviddfriedman.com/