[Sca-cooks] A mystery ingredient in a soap recipe
Daniel Myers
edouard at medievalcookery.com
Wed Sep 24 17:03:08 PDT 2003
On Wednesday, September 24, 2003, at 06:05 PM, Sharon Gordon wrote:
> In a soap recipe people are trying to figure out what "aluminic
> casini" is.
> Taken literally it would translate as "little aluminum houses" which
> would
> perhaps make sense if there were a form of aluminum that was
> maufactured
> into little house shapes of some sort and sold in that form. But that
> still
> wouldn't explain the actual chemical content of aluminic casini.
>
> Any ideas or places to look?
How old is this soap recipe? If it's period then it can't be a
reference to the metal form of aluminum - it wasn't discovered until
1825. The word "aluminum" however is derived from the latin word
"alumen" which means "alum".
Throughout history, alum has been used in dying. Casini might be a
reference to casein (a milk protein), or "aluminic casini" might be a
idiomatic expression meaning something like "cottage alum" (kind of
like saying "farmer cheese" or "home fries"). This is all just rampant
speculation though, seeing as my Italian is almost non-existent.
- Doc
--
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Edouard Halidai (Daniel Myers)
http://www.medievalcookery.com/
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