[Sca-cooks] Memos from a Mastic Marathon....

[Philippa Alderton]

While going through the recipes, looking for mastic in
recipes, I made several notes along the way, and I'll
share those here.

What is "blattes de Bysance"? It's obviously a French
phrase meaning Byzantine something, but I was unable
to follow the footnotes in Cariadoc's Cookbooks (parts
were obscured by blurry reproduction) and although I
saw the phrase several times, I was unable to decipher
its meaning.

On many of the Arabic recipes, there was the suffix,
"iya", as in: Burinya, Tuffahiya, Madira, Raihaniya,
Rutabiya, Labaniya, Hisrimiya, Halawiya, Rummaniya,
Sumaqiya, Limuwiya, Mamquriya, Hubaishiya,
Mishmishiya,
Narenjiya, Masliya, Isfankiya, Rukhamiya, Itriya,
Muhallibiya, Anbariya, Mishmishiya, Safarjaliya,
Narenjiya, Fahtiya, Burniya, Basaliya, Raihaniya,
Nurjisiya, Nujumiya, Buraniya al-Qar, Khudairiya,
Makhfiya, Dinariya, and Rutabiya.

Does this suffix have a particular meaning? Most of
the above are some variant of lamb or red meat, but I
think there were others which weren't, with that
suffix. Also, was wondering if the "ija" in
"Mudaqqaqat Sadhija" might be a variant of the "iya".
Margali says that "iya" means "in the style of" much
as the French "a la" does. Is that it, or is it an
indicator of something else?

If y'all remember, I was questioning the use of
rosewater in cookery the other day, as per another
discussion Margali and I had. Her thought was that
when SCAdians first got their hands on rosewater, it
was the very strong French rosewater, and that the
Middle Eastern rosewater is much milder, but SCAdians
got used to the heavier flavor, so use lots more than
was intended in ME cooking. My searches today tend to
bear that out- many of the recipes say "sprinkle with
rosewater", and I think that's just what it means- you
want a light aftertaste, not a drenching of it.

If you paid attention to my last post, I had a repeat,
but that's because there were two different recipes
with the same name.