[Sca-cooks] making vinegar
Sandra Kisner
sjk3 at cornell.edu
Thu Nov 18 11:08:05 PST 2004
>>Stere Htt Well ("A book of medieval refinements, recipes and remedies
>>from a manuscript in Samuel Pepys's library" - Pepys Library ms 1047) has
>>a recipe. Though the Pepys is OOP, the ms. is perhaps 15th
>>century. This is a facing-page translation, with no redactions. The
>>Introduction by Delia Smith, on the other hand, is one of those hideous
>>"disguise the smell and flavour of decaying flesh" sorts of things
>>(thank goodness for libraries).
>
>The modern English translations are also unreliable. It's the source for
>our "that no egg may escape" translation anecdote--the translator knew
>about the 15th c. word for egg, and as a result mistranslated "air" as
>"egg." The recipe has no eggs in it.
>--
>David/Cariadoc
I'm not surprised. I mostly just flipped through the book to see what was
in it, and noticed some translations that, while not wrong, involved word
changes that didn't seem necessary. The one that comes to mind involved
hollowing out a parboiled onion, but I've returned the book and don't
remember the exact words. Something like "take out the core" vs. "remove
the inward parts."
Sandra
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