[Sca-cooks] Galloping Goulash....

[Phlip]

OK, Paul Buell has been working on the etymology of goulash, and has
consulted with Gene Anderson. Charles Perry's in the loop, but hasn't
responded yet.

To reiterate, the discussion started when Muiredach was gifted with some
"Goulash" by a neighbor of his in Georgia. This consisted of hamburger,
tomato sauce, onions, and pasta. It was not what he was expecting (although
it has been served to generations of US school kids like that)- he was
expecting something more like the "traditional" Hungarian Goulash, which is
usually a dish of meat, onions, and potatoes well spiced with paprika.
Obviously, two of those ingredients would be post Columbus, and considering
how long it took potatoes to be accepted in Europe, very possibly the dish
as stated is post-period (1600).

Paul told me privately that he seemed to remember an early Turkic dish named
very similarly, which was a dish of meat and pasta, that he thought the
Turks might well have brought the dish to Hungary, and that he was going to
do some etymological research.

He posted me:

I think that it is probably not Gul, with an umlaut, flower food, but Kul,
with no umlaut, ash, slave or yanissary (Turkish elite army) food....You
know that ash is a general term for food in Turkish. An ashci is a cook,
particularly a cook attached to the yanissaries...

and ( to me, Gene, and Charles) :

I am suspicious about the derivation of the word goulash from Hungarian
Gulyas, "cowboy." The ash part looks suspiciously like the Turkish word for
cooked food to me and the dish itself, if you look at its origins, looks
Turkish too, and the Turks did hang around in Hungary for a while. What do
you think? Probably not Gul, with an umlaut, but could be kulash, "slave,"
i.e. Yanissary, "food." I mean ashchi was the title of a yanissary cook,
among other things. Very suspicious that we might be dealing with
self-serving Hungarian myth here.

Gene's response was :

> Don't know.  The Hungarian word is in fact gulya's ("goulash" is a
> French/Austrian spelling).   The Hungarian for "cowboy" is marhaspasztor
> (pastor of cows).  Durned if I know.  The dish itself is just beef boiled
> with veg.  (Paprika is a recent addition, of course, and the potato came
in
> only a couple centuries ago too, and take those away and you really have
> nothing much but boiled beef.)  One needs a Hungarian etymological
dictionary.
> There are lots of Turkic loanwords in Hung (alma for apple, for instance)
> from about the right time period.

One of the things we've been discussing is the fact that it seems to usually
be highly spiced. I'm wondering if there might be a relationship there, with
Adamantius' seminal chili, being basicly meat, well spiced and dried, and
serving as a travel food base- not necessarily a relationship interms of any
direct descent from the Mongols/Hungarians to the Western US
gauchos/cowboys, but in the sense of a prepared food, filling a similar
niche in the prepared travel food "ecology".

Thoughts, folks?

Phlip




Never a horse that cain't be rode,
And never a rider who cain't be throwed....