[Sca-cooks] Fwd: FW: Mongol foodways

lilinah at earthlink.net lilinah at earthlink.net
Tue Jul 4 16:31:32 PDT 2006


Phlip wrote:
>OK, folks,  Paul just checked with Mary Isin, whom he considers
>to be THE definitive expert on the topic. Perry's al-Baghdadi was
>a translation of the original recipes - these recipes are, in fact
>additional to the basic al-Baghdadi by Sirvani, so the recipes are
>in fact period, and different, from those in Perry's translation of
>al-Baghdadi.

Well, that's what i've been saying and writing about since i got the 
book, "A la table du Grand Turc", on April 11 of this year. My first 
posting about it to this list was on April 12.

Perhaps if you'd passed along my messages to Paul he'd have 
understood clearly what i was saying.

I mentioned that these 15th c. Ottoman recipes were written down by 
Chirvani - the French spelling of Shirvani (the Turkish has a cedilla 
under the initial "S", meaning that "S" is pronounced like "Sh" in 
English).

And i mentioned that Chirvani added them to his translation into 
Turkish of al-Baghdadi.

And i mentioned the modern author and translator, Stefane Yerasimos, 
a university professor in France, originally from Istanbul, who 
translated this selection of the 15th century Ottoman recipes into 
modern languages, including French. A scholar who wrote quite a few 
books on Ottoman culture, apparently he died recently, so i can't 
correspond with him.

And i noted that Yersimos said that there are 82 recipes added by 
Chirvani, a dozen more than the "around seventy recipes" Mary Isin 
mentioned. In fact, it is likely she got her information from 
Yerasimos, directly or indirectly.

In his introductory matter - of which i have now translated into hard 
copy over half (having skimmed it once, then carefully read through 
it twice) - Yerasimos also discusses the recipes and food related 
information in a number of early 15 C. medical books, mentioning the 
medical texts by title - alas i don't read Medieval Ottoman Turkish. 
I didn't mention this before.

>  So, hopefully, the confusion is solved- sorry about that ;-)

I am glad to hear you are no longer confused. I certainly wasn't, nor 
were several people i have corresponded with off-list about this.

As i said, these are the earliest surviving Ottoman Turkish recipes 
known. And i'm translating Yerasimos's work so i can make this 
information available to SCAdians - not just the recipes, but the 
informative scholarly and explanatory essays. Since i am translating 
Yerasimos's work, i suspect i cannot just translate it and make it 
readily available, since his translations and essays are, i am sure, 
protected by copyright, even in translation.

Yerasimos compared these 15th c. recipe with those in a cookbook from 
the late 18th century and others from the 19th. However, contrary to 
the beliefs of some SCAdians who have taught classes at SCA events 
saying that Middle Eastern food hadn't changed over the centuries 
(hah!), by the 18th century Ottoman cuisine is already quite 
different from that of the 15th C. This can be seen because there are 
some recipes with the same names and the same primary ingredients, 
but are clearly very different from the 15th c. versions. Generally 
the more recent recipes use far fewer ingredients and much simplified 
techniques. Further, there are many recipes that seem to have passed 
out of Ottoman cuisine altogether.

I will be teaching a class about this work at our West Kingdom Arts 
and Sciences Tourney near the end of this month. My intention is to 
talk about Chirvani's work, and Yerasimos's comparisons with 
information in surviving Ottoman records, menus from the Topkapi, and 
Ottoman medical books. And we will cook a small meal of 4 dishes 
using these recipes.
-- 
Urtatim (that's err-tah-TEEM)
the persona formerly known as Anahita



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