[Sca-cooks] Historic Near East Spice Boxes

[lilinah at earthlink.net]

Date: Thu, 28 Oct 2004 09:53:21 -0400
From: "Sharon Gordon" <gordonse at one.net>

>This is wonderful, wonderful, wonderful!  Thanks for doing it.

Aw, shucks (visualize toe dragging in the dirt) thanks.

>For the current analysis, I'd love to know about salt usage.

See my comment in my other response. I mean, i can get around to it, 
but i'd rather expand on some of your and others' suggestions.

>For an expanded analysis, I'd enjoy knowing about:
>1) What the percentages look like if you break murri down into its component
>parts and then add those to their various categories.  For a modern recipe
>as an example, how does it affect the basil count if pesto is broken down
>into its ingredients?

Since the murri most commonly used is the "rotted barley" murri, and 
it doesn't have all the component parts of Byzantine or fake murri 
such as Cariadoc makes, i'm not sure this is really useful. In fact, 
several recipes say explicitly *not* to use fake murri (they don't 
say why). And then there are a couple that call for fish murri, which 
is not defined or described, but which i assume (perhaps incorrectly) 
to be essentially garum/fish sauce.

>2) A similar analysis for the sweets.

On my to-do list.

>3) What you have done already plus the sweets for combined totals.

Maybe...

>4) For each book, the nonsweet and sweet compared.

Maybe...

>5) A comparison table with all four sweet and nonsweet.
>
>6) A comparison table with all the nonsweets in one column and all the
>sweets in one column.  Here the nonsweets from both books would be combined
>and new overall percentages would be calculated.  Ditto for the sweets.

Hey, Cap'n, i'm an art geek, not a statistician :-)

>Other ideas for the current analysis:
>1) It might be that the lemon balm could be counted as one of your souring
>agents. Maybe the citron leaves too.

They aren't sour. I've used a variety of citrus leaves in 
non-Medieval/Renaissance cooking. Plucked fresh from the tree. I have 
lived in proximity to lemon and orange trees, and purchased Southeast 
Asian citrus leaves - yeah, they aren't citron. In my experience of 
several varieties of citrus leaves both fresh and dried, they don't 
taste all that different, and in a dish with plenty of other 
seasonings, there's no noticeable difference, although i prefer the 
fresh leaves.

>2) If the recipes don't specify exact amounts for the herbs and spices, you
>might want to word your spice box parts count a bit differently.  For
>example, envision a recipe that calls for 1 cup of parsley and 1 teaspoon of
>ground black pepper.  If you are counting the number of recipes parsley and
>pepper are in, this recipe would add one to each count.  By volume though
>you have 48 parts more parsley than pepper. (And by weight this count of
>parts might be something other than 48 to 1.)  So if you were stocking the
>kitchen, and made this recipe a lot, you'd use a lot more parsley than
>pepper.

I'm a doctor, not an engineer... uh, i mean... Yeah, you've got a 
good point here, and i did think about it, but balked at the 
computation. I'd have to go back and figure out how much of each of 
the listed spices is used in every recipe - and in some there aren't 
specific amounts, so i'd have to "redact" each of those recipes and 
test them to see if the amounts seem reasonable, and, and, and...

>For future projects, I'd enjoy seeing similar analyses for:
>1) Fruits including implied fruits such as the grapes in grape wine vinegar,
>or implied from a certain kind of honey.  Any info on varieties by name or
>description?
>
>2) Vegetables and vegetable categories (roots, fruits, greens, seeds, seed
>pods, etc) Any info on varieties by name or description?
>
>3) Grains including implied grains in fermented products.
>
>4) Meat and animal products including parts specified
>
>5) Fats and oils

All of the above are on my to-do list...

>6) Cooking methods

David Waines wrote a chapter on this in "In a Caliph's Kitchen", but 
I'm sure it could be expanded.

>7)  Value added products--recipes for and recipes used in.  Including value
>added products as a step of a recipe.

Might not be that hard. I noticed a few, but not a lot.

>8) Condiments (probably a subset of #7)

Well, there are stand along recipes for olives, various pickles, 
mustard, but it isn't always clear how they are eaten in the course 
of a meal.

>9) Preservation methods explicit or implied.

I would estimate they are primarily salting, pickling (vinegar), and 
preserving with sugar. There are also a few references to smoking 
(meat and olives) and drying (meat, but no recipe).

>10) Beans, pulses, legumes

Up there with (1) through (5)

>11) Crossing the cookbooks with import and trade route knowledge of their
>times.  What percent of the recipe ingredients are local, semi-local, and
>imported? What percent is imported from where?

I am actually interested in this, but it sure sounds like a lifetime 
project - and i'm already past the half-century mark :-)

>12) Liquids and beverages

Beverages are pretty much in their own chapter in al-Anadalusi - or 
do you mean liquids used in cooking?

>13) Cooking implements and utensils, explicity or implied, maybe part of
>cooking methods #6.

David Waines wrote a chapter on this in "In a Caliph's Kitchen". I 
imagine it could be expanded.

>14) Flowers and flower derivatives eaten

I've noted those i found - primarily roses in both books, and 
lavender in al-Andalusi. I can go back and see if there are more, but 
i actually was looking for them, and i didn't note any, unless they 
show up among the sweets and breads in both books and beverages in 
al-Andalusi.

>15) Any recipes for non food items?  If so what categories do they fall
>into? Household cleaning, personal cleaning, toiletries and adornment, dyes,
>medicine, other domestic arts?

None in these two cookbooks. I have the Formulary of al-Kindi and i 
want to get the Formulary of al-Samarqandi. Al-Kindi has some, but 
it's not a cookbook, it's chiefly medicinal.

>16) Recipes which contain ingredients with significant or minor 
>anti-bacterial properties.

I think i may pass on this.

>17) Spice and herb mixes.  Are there sets of herbs and spices that occur
>frequently together?  Can you get a sense of the proportions on any of
>these?  If you were a spice and herb merchant of that time, what would you
>call the mixtures for any that are not already named? For (modern) example:
>taco spices, chili mix, pumpkin pie spice, italian herb mix, spinach dip
>mix, herbs of Provence.

On my to-do list. In fact, i'm really interested in looking at this.

>18) Forms of herbs and spices--fresh, dried, ground, chopped, leaves, seeds,
>dropped in whole and then fished out before serving, sauteed in a flavor
>carrier such as oil?

I noticed this to some extent, but it's hard to say in some cases 
just how fresh things would be.

Cilantro pretty much has to be used fresh (yes, we can puree and 
freeze it, but that wasn't an option in the 13th c.). I'm pretty 
confident that rose petals are used fresh. Dried mint is mentioned a 
few times. Lavender flowers can be used either fresh or dried, but 
the recipes don't specify. And i've no idea whether all the ginger 
imported was dried or if some was grown fresh. It can get pretty 
chilly in the winter in Andalucia (a lot like Northern California), 
although there's only snow in the mountains and it rarely freezes, 
which may be too cold for ginger. I'm far from a botanist or 
horticulturist, and i'm a lousy gardener.

>19) Sauces--separate and as parts of other recipes.

Worth thinking about...

>20) Breads
>
>21) Types of sweets--how would you categorize them and their component
>parts?

Something i think about when i read the chapters and recipes on 
breads and sweets. But there are quite a few recipes i'd have to make 
to test the final product and i am not a fan of sweets to determine 
just what they are. For example, many involve manipulating hot sugar 
based liquids or semi-liquids, and i'm not a fan of what these might 
be, such as hard candy or pulled taffy. I do like nougat and some of 
these might be that. But i really don't have a *burning* desire to 
work with sugar, beyond European sugar plate, which doesn't involve 
hot syrup..

>22) Recipe occasions.  Do any recipes indicate that they are for special
>events, occasions or times such as holidays, when the X are ripe, weddings,
>new mothers, people ill with a particular malady, religious constraint or
>feast days, morning or evening?

Probably more than a few. There are plenty of medicinally oriented 
recipes in al-Andalusi. I didn't notice them in al-Baghdadi, which 
just means i wasn't paying attention, so it's worth checking... And 
al-Kindi has some actually edible formulae, although they aren't 
exactly food.

>And having posted a wish list :-), please let me say that I realize that
>this is easily 10-20 years of A&S projects if all done by one person.

I suspect i don't have 20 years to devote to this... by that time 
i'll be up to the 3/4 of a century mark and probably have terrible 
arthritis. But i can sure give it a decade.

Anahita