[Sca-cooks] sops

Terry Decker t.d.decker at worldnet.att.net
Mon Jun 5 13:06:50 PDT 2006


The recipes you have cited are all 14th Century or later and most of them 
are written in Middle English which came into use around 1100.  "Sopp" has 
its origins in Old English (5th to 11th Centuries) and the first known 
reference is, IIRC, in a Saxon Leechbook from about 1000 CE and it refers to 
the act of dipping bread in liquid.  This means that Elaine's usage predates 
the usage you reference by at least 300 years.

Your argument is just the reverse of the reality and you have been bitten 
(as I have been at other times) by failure to check the etymology of a word.

Bear

>I don't disagree that 'sop' later became a verb and the tool rather than 
>the liquid, but here are four period sop recipes.
>
> You could just have easily claimed that 'sop' is another word for 'onion'.
>
> You can now more clearly see that bread is what sop is served *on top of* 
> and not what sop *is*.  The last, especially, makes that clear.
>
> <recipes clipped>
> Harleian MS. 279, Potage Dyvers
> Laud MS. 553
> Harleian MS. 279 - Potage Dyvers
> Harleian MS. 4016
>
> Duriel
>
>> They're two different recipes, as is shown by the different ingredients
>> and references.  The one doesn't reference sops, it is a recipe for sop.
>> It references bread, which is an ingredient.  It is not a recursive
>> recipe.
>
> According to the OED a sop is both the bread used to sop up liquid, and
> corresponding with that, the liquid used to dress a sop.  That certainly
> reflects what I've seen of recipes that use the word sop. The quoted
> recipes may not be recursive, but the sop reference itself certainly is.
> The sop is both the bread and the mess that goes with it -- but I don't
> think it's can properly be called a sop without the bread. Notice that 
> both
> the original recipes quotes use toasted white bread in a very specific 
> way.
>
> toodles, margaret





More information about the Sca-cooks mailing list