[Sca-cooks] Moghul Food

[lilinah at earthlink.net]

G. Tacitus Adamantius wrote:
>I was recently told about some controversy in my Kingdom in which a
>Laurel recognized for her work in Persian studies announced in
>connection with some local cook's modern Middle Eastern cooking that
>modern ME cooking is fine for SCA use since Persian cooking has not
>changed materially for 1000 years, and her correspondents in modern
>Iran confirm this.

Aargh! Aargh! Aargh! (sound of hair being torn out).

I'm on quite a few Near and Middle Eastern oriented SCA e-lists. This 
was the sort of thing i heard about garb back in the dark ages when i 
joined up (7 years ago :-) People complained that it was too 
difficult and too expensive to make period Near/Middle Eastern garb. 
And besides, things hadn't changed (insert Carl Sagan voice) in 
*thousands* of years (end Carl Sagan voice).

(and i found his intonation especially annoying when i was in labor 
in the maternity ward and he was on TV. I switched to the World 
Series. Much better)

>The guy who told me about all this is another Laurel who has
>extensively studied the Persian culture in our period, but hasn't
>done much of a study on food, and merely suspected that this claim
>was utter sheepdip, without any hard evidence of same.

Wow! Someone else who says "sheepdip" instead of a shorter word!

Well, this guy is absolutely correct. Yeah, yeah, i don't know of an 
SCA period Persian cookbook, but looking through "period" Andalusi, 
Egyptian, 'Abbasid, and Ottoman cookbooks and comparing the cuisine 
to modern recipes, it's easy to see that are significant differences. 
How'd this female get a Laurel?!? (don't answer. I know, i'm not 
displaying "peer like qualities")

>I got out a modern Persian cookbook and showed him an approximate
>percentage of dishes prominently featuring ingredients the Persians
>almost certainly could not have had access to 1000 years ago. I
>pointed out that I couldn't be sure of the extent to which cooking
>methods and styles had changed, but that the likelihood was that some
>ancient, traditional methods had survived, and some had probably
>changed per the same cultural and social forces that caused available
>foodstuffs to change. Looking at Kitab al-Tabikh, which may not be
>completely identifiable with the Persian cookery of its time, but
>which appears to be Persian-influenced, at least, we find some pretty
>significant differences in techniques and styles.

Oh, yeah. So many of the dishes have Persian derived names and are 
supposedly based on Persian recipes. This is also true of that 
handful of 15th C. Ottoman recipes recently published - lots of 
Persian influence.

Related, but tangential... when Ibn Battuta visited with Turkic 
people in the 14th century, they eschewed sweet dishes. By the 16th 
century, with the rise to power of the Ottomans, the Turks in 
Istanbul had developed an enormous sweet tooth. And that's in less 
than 200 years!

According to Yerasimos who translated those 15th c. Ottoman recipes, 
the Ottomans didn't adopt tomatoes and bell peppers until the 18th 
century, and yet they are such an integral part of modern Turkish 
cuisine.

So how could Persian cuisine stay the same until the 21st century, 
especially when there were in the midst of so many trade routes and 
and so many wars?
-----
Urtatim (that's err-tah-TEEM)
the persona formerly known as Anahita
-- 

Ride your camel to Dar Anahita
http://home.earthlink.net/~lilinah
SCA-period Near and Middle Eastern Costuming,
including Persian, Ottoman, Maghribi, and Andalusian,
Medieval Muslim Egyptian knitting, and
complete menus and period recipes from seven SCA feasts
(from German to Persian), 23 German mushroom recipes,
an analysis of the spices used in two different 13th C. Arabic
language cookbooks, and more Medieval food-related stuff

And, yes, my former name *IS* on pretty much every page...