[Sca-cooks] Persian, anyone?

[Jim and Andi]

I will *definitely* be doing a page similar to Anahita's in the near future
with the research and recipes from the past few things I've been successful
at and the stuff from this feast.

Unfortunately, I'm trying to focus on food in 1510 Samarkand, not India. At
this point Samarkand was one of the capitals of Timurid Persia, the other
being Herat. I'm using books written about the early Mughals and then
carefully re-tracing ingredients and cooking methods to make sure that the
recipes aren't too Indian-influenced. To begin with I read the Babur-nama
and the Humayun-nama and took notes of every single mention of food. Notes
from both books only covered one sheet of paper!!  They did import Indian
sugar, spices, and maybe even some rice or pulses, but the style of the
region was Persian-influenced, not Indian. It's been very difficult to
separate the 2 out, and I'm not entirely sure I've been successful. But I'll
definitely pass along the info when I'm done. It's a really fascinating
region.

I'll definitely have to find those other sources, I would love to do a real
period Indian feast someday.

Madhavi

 -----Original Message-----
From: 	sca-cooks-admin at ansteorra.org [mailto:sca-cooks-admin at ansteorra.org]
On Behalf Of david friedman
Sent:	Saturday, January 26, 2002 12:08 PM
To:	sca-cooks at ansteorra.org
Subject:	RE: [Sca-cooks] Persian, anyone?

>My resources are the Wheeler Thackston translation of the Babur-nama
>(primary), the Beveridge translation of the Humayun-nama (primary), "Moghul
>Cooking" by Joyce Westrip (secondary, an actual cookbook, she quotes and
>mostly works from solid period and OOP primary sources) and "Food and
Drinks
>in Mughal India" by Dr. Satya Prakash Sangar which is the absolute most
>torturous book on cooking you will ever read but it is CHOCK-FULL of
primary
>data.

Sounds like you have lots of stuff, and should eventually be writing
it up in some form the rest of us can use. The two things that occur
to me that you seem to be missing are:

The _Akbarnama_, of which _Ain i Akbari_ is one volume.

The _Rehla_ of Ibn Battuta, a substantial part of which describes his
experiences in India in the 14th c.

Also, there is supposed to exist an English translation by P. J.
Ramasawmy of Pak(h)asastra by Velu-Pillai, said to be a 4th c. Indian
cookbook. I haven't seen it, and am not sure it is really a cookbook.
--
David/Cariadoc
http://www.daviddfriedman.com/
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