Freezing nuts, was Re: SC - Re: losenges fryes/potageof beans boiled

[Robbin Long]

Eden said about the translation in the Neapolitan Cookbook:

<< at least once he's been flat out wrong. >>

In a private message, quoted here with permission, she pointed me to the
place she had in mind:

<< it's page 100, Menu #4
under Rosto minuto, the first entry "polastri, para .iiii"
if you read Scully's footnote 37 he says "para" means a pair/brace in
this case, where it clearly means "for" as in "pullets for 4". >>

Here are some sceptical comments on Eden's view of this passage:

(1) While it is _clearly_ true that "para" means 'for' in Spanish, it is
not obviously true for Italian. Do you have any evidence that "para"
means 'for' in 15th century Italian? 
If you look at one of your favourite dictionaries, the dictionary of
Florio 1598, he says:
_Par_ a paire ...
_Para_ ... paires, couples, ...

(2) A form like "para" is used in this text and in other Italian
cookbooks of the time only as a form of the verb "parare" (but see
below). The word for the meaning 'for' in Anonimo Veneziano, Martino and
others is "per" ("per XII persone", for 12 persons, An.Ven.; "per
quattro o cinque persone", Mart.; "per dece persone" Libro B of the
Anonimo medidionale, where "ad" is used in this sense, too).

(3) The Neapolitan cook uses a different kind of expression when talking
about persons: "una per homo", one for each person.

Thus, until you provide further information, I do not see any evidence
to support neither the claim that Scully was "flat out wrong" here nor
the claim that _para_ "clearly means 'for'" here.

Besides Scully's and Eden's solution, I was thinking about a third
interpretation. In the Riva del Garda version of Martino, there is a
recipe, which includes "le potray cocere sopra una _para di ferro_
calda" (Benporat Nr. 250; Bertoluzza p. 213). Here, "para" seems to have
been a form of "pala", something like 'shovel'. There is a picture of a
cooking pala in the work of Scappi 1570. Thus "para 4" would mean: 'four
cooking shovels of sth.'. However, I do not think, that this is a better
solution; rather I think that this view is implausible for two reasons.
(i) Looking at the picture in Scappi, a pala was obviously used for
cooking but probably not for serving. (ii) There is probably no way to
use a pala with polastri and the other birds mentioned in the menu.
[(iii) In case the plural of "pala" is not "pala", which I do not know,
this would rule out this view entirely.]

To sum up: (1), (2) and (3) suggest, that
- -- Scully's view of the passage is certainly a possible interpretation,
while,
- -- as far as I can see at present, Eden's view is not.

Thomas