[Sca-cooks] chutney (was compost)

[johnna holloway]

Louise Smithson wrote: snipped
  So are chutneys place in english cooking a
> hangover from medieval cuisine.
  Any thoughts on this matter gladly entertained.
> Helewyse de Birkestad recipe snipped
----------------------------------------------------------
Alan Davidson in his Oxford Companion to Food indicates
that CHUTNEY is "the ordinary English spelling of the
Indian word which used to be spelled chutni and is now
chatni." It was adopted by the English early in their
colonial days in India. According to OED, Chatni is Hindi.
The OED quotes only go back to 1813. Laura Mason with
Catherine Brown in Traditional Foods of Britain says that
chutneys were gladly adopted as an addition to the then
traditional recipes for jams and sour pickles. They do not
draw any connection to medieval cookery.

Johnnae llyn Lewis    Johnna Holloway