[Sca-cooks] Spanish

[Robin Carroll-Mann]

-----Original Message-----
From: Wildecelery at aol.com

In my realm of experience manteca is lard, where manteqilla (sp?) is butter.

-Ardenia
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You're absolutely correcct that these are the modern meanings.  I have not seen "mantequilla" in any of the period Spanish cookbooks, health manuals, and related resources that I've used.  On the website www.corpusdelespanol.org, which is a searchable database of Spanish words, "mantequilla" appears 5 times in 16th c. sources, and twice in 17th c. sources.  In the dictionary of the Real Academia Española, the word doesn't appear until the 18th century, when it is defined as a paste made of "manteca de vacas", beaten smooth, and sugar -- something similar to a buttercream frosting.  Not until the 1925 edition is "mantequilla" defined as butter, and then it's a secondary definition, after the sweet paste mentioned above.

The historical database maintained at the RAE (www.rae.es) has 7 uses of "mantequilla" pre-18th c., but I cannot tell from the quotes if these refer to butter or butter-sugar paste.

To sum up: "mantequilla" *may* have been used as a word for butter in Renaissance Spain, but not commonly.  The common period term is "manteca de vacas", sometimes shortened to "manteca" in cases where the context makes the meaning clear.

Sorry to be verbose, but this question pushed one of my buttons (in a good way).

Lady Brighid ni Chiarain
Barony of Settmour Swamp, East Kingdom