[Sca-cooks] butter

[lilinah at earthlink.net]

While much of Spain is pretty warm in the summer, it's not the
equatorial tropics. Al-Andalus, which by the time the cookbook was
written, was limited to southern Spain, which is *north* of the San
Francisco Bay area (not on the same continent, of course :-) I was
there in December 2000. It was #@%*& cold and rainy, just like the SF
Bay area, but without heat in many places we stayed. They had a
thriving dairy industry in the region when i was there.

Butter is also commonly used in modern Morocco, much of which is
around the same latitude as SF and Northern California south of SF. I
was there in December 2000 - January 2001. It was also #@%*& cold and
rainy, just like the SF Bay area, but without heat in many places we
stayed. Except for some places where water froze outside at night.
And scary driving over the Atlas Mountains on roads that weren't
quite 2 lanes wide with 2 way traffic and *very* long drops over the
side... and plenty of ice on the road.

I wonder if the butter mentioned in the Anon. Andal. was anything
like modern Moroccan smen. Butter is melted and mixed with various
seasonings. Then it is buried. A really good aged smen is dug up a
decade after burial for a daughter's wedding. Folks do eat younger
smen... Sounds to me like rancidity is not the issue. Might also
explain why some folks didn't like it :-)

Anahita