[Sca-cooks] Halvah marzipan or nougat?

[Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius]

On Oct 21, 2007, at 7:31 PM, David Friedman wrote:

>> There are quite a few Islamic hulwah recipes in sources such as Kitab
>> al Tabikh, which I seem to recall is somewhat older than the 15th
>> century --
>
>
> ...
>
>> Adamantius
>
> "Kitab al tabikh" means, roughly speaking, "cookbook." If you are
> thinking of the one by al-Warraq, it's tenth century, but I don't
> know if it has any hulwa in it, although it's likely enough.  If you
> mean the one by al-Baghdadi, it's 13th c. and has hulwa recipes in it.

That's it, then, I suspect.

> As best I understand it, the word means, roughly, "sweets," and
> refers to a category of dishes. The one I do is a "beat sugar syrup
> into beaten egg white to make natif, use that as a binder for nuts"
> version.

Sounds good. But can you see my point that it might be an  
intellectual disservice to then go on to say, "Hulwa is Swiss  
Meringue,"? Firstly, because some forms don't even come close, and  
second, because there's a possibility that the need to describe it  
only in terms of another confection may easily be both confusing and,  
ultimately, ineffective at determining what the blamed thing is?

Not that this is something you seem to do very often, mind you...

Adamantius