[Sca-cooks] Horchata - Barley Water - galingale

[Suey]

Phil Troy/Adamantius provided a definition of galingale as chufa from 
Larousse Gastronomique which seems to contradict his and others input 
Stefan complied in the galengale-msg 6/11/06 
http://www.florilegium.org/files/PLANTS/galangale-msg.html. Adamantius 
continued:
>>> Occasionally we've had occasion here to mention an alternate usage  
>>> for "galingale", we dance around a bit, Stefan asks if this is  
>>> Alpina  Officinalis, we say no, it's just a plant known in some  
>>> folk herbal traditions as galingale, it's related to sedge, etc.,  
>>> etc.
>>>
>>>
>>>       
> My experience has been that he has a particular genius for  
> identifying the flaw in an argument. After knowing him for many  
> years, I still can't be certain if he asks some of the questions he  
> asks because he really doesn't know the answers, or if he is gently  
> trying to expose the fact that there may still be someone left on the  
> planet who might not grasp an explanation in its current form,  
> whatever that is.
>   
    Yes, although I have only met Stefan once I totally agree that he 
has a subtle way of persuading us to research further to correct our own 
flaws in expressing our argument or to re-enforce our point. In this 
case I think we need someone knowledgeable about plant terms in French 
and English to review the original Larousse definition of galingale to 
see if something has been mistranslated. If not, if the translation is 
correct, I would conclude that Larousse is not applying the correct 
common name to the scientific name as seen in mistranslations of common 
names for fish or confusion is produced by using the same name for 
different plants that have nothing to do with each other as seen in the 
earthnut example. Could this be the case in the French use of the word 
galingale?
Suey