[Sca-cooks] sops

Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius adamantius.magister at verizon.net
Mon Jun 5 19:19:07 PDT 2006


On Jun 5, 2006, at 9:01 PM, Tom Vincent wrote:

>> You don't find a similarity in well over 90% of the usages cited?
>>
> D:  Sure!  Many of the same ingredients, definitely.  Many of the same
> steps, definitely.  I see a group of recipes that are common and some
> refer to 'sops' as the bread and some refer to the bread as an
> ingredient and 'sop' as the final combined dish.  I wouldn't expect
> recipes over a broad range of time & location to mirror each other.  I
> guess I just don't see the problem with *both* definitions co- 
> existing.

Neither do I. What I had originally said, or intended to say, was not  
that sops are only the toast, but that the toast was what makes sops  
sops, in the vast majority of cases. Without that toast, it's a  
brewet, or a broth, or a liquor, a cawdel, whatever, but not a sop.  
What I questioned was the idea that the thing that makes a sop a sop  
is the liquid component.

>>
>>> The fact that the different recipes have two different definitions
>>> of 'sops' but very similar ingredients...maybe some of the later
>>> ones came from some of the earlier ones?
>>>
>>
>> Maybe I'm receiving the list out of sync or incompletely, but so far
>> I've seen a total of _one_ recipe that doesn't call for toast or
>> other bread, and it hasn't been ruled out that that dish was not
>> served with toasts, given the context and even other sop recipes in
>> the same source.
>>
> D:  Sounds reasonable to me!
>>> It really is okay for a word to have multiple definitions, multiple
>>> contexts, a noun at one time, a verb at another.
>>>
>>
>> It's okay if it's true. When I last checked this conversation, we
>> were discussing its usage as two different nouns.
>>
> D:  And, again, I don't see that they can't co-exist.

Nor I, but... see above.

>   How about
> 'linen', which can be the fabric or can be an object sometimes made of
> linen and sometimes made of non-linen?  Or 'dance', which can be an
> event filled with dances or a particular set of movements or the
> instructions to a set of movements or a style of a set of movements?
>>
>>> I think it's really educational and interesting to view 8 different
>>> recipes showing so many similarities and a few differences from
>>> such a broad spectrum in time and distance.
>>>
>>
>> Me, too. My intention was to quickly and loosely categorize/identify
>> them according to the greatest common denominator, not to look at
>> that common denominator and rule it out as significant.
>>
> D:  Okay.  I look for patterns rather than exceptions.  It certainly
> appears that 'sops' in many recipes refers to the bread soaked by the
> other ingredients and in others as the entire dish which most often
> contains bread.
>>
>>> This'll blow your mind as my favorite example of extreme word
>>> evolution:  In the 17th century, 'maggot' meant a fancy or delight.
>>>
>>
>> Interesting, but what's your point? A simplified version of that in
>> the subject at hand would be something like, sop (n), a dish of broth
>> or other liquid poured over bread, => sop, (v), the act of soaking
>> that liquid into that bread, and by extension, other types of
>> soaking, => soup (n), a sop-like pottage that may or may not contain
>> bread in the bowl, => souper, (v), or sup (v) to make and/or eat such
>> a dish, generally in the evening, with a pottage and, generally, the
>> stale remains of the morning's bread, => supper (n), a relatively
>> insubstantial evening meal often featuring such a dish...
>>
> D:  Just, to quote, "that words change meaning", said the gay man  
> as he
> picked up his faggot for the night. :)

Yes, and his doctor told him to cut down...

<sigh>

Adamantius



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