[Sca-cooks] Books to cook, Roger II

[lilinah at earthlink.net]

I'm still struggling through my vast backlog of Digests. As i was 
travelling for a week, i was only reading personal mails in detail. 
So i'm still working on making headway through almost 2 weeks worth 
of Digests. So please pardon me coming in so late on so many 
threads...

Suey <lordhunt at gmail.com> wrote:
>Serena wrote:
>  > Could you please provide further information on this text. I did not
>  > know that such a book existed - it would have saved me a world of
>  > research when I was doing a 12th century Sicilian feast.

I was so excited by your mention, Suey, of a 12th c. Sicilian 
cookbook - mmm-mmm-mmm, the possibilities of Fatimid period 
Arabo-Sicilian cuisine... so tempting!

>Sorry,  I thought Al Idrisi wrote something on cookery as "Kitab" is in
>the title of one of his books but it seems to be a dictionary of drugs
>in several languages.

Alas!

The word "Kitab" merely means "Book", so many Arabic books start with 
the word "Kitab", as they are "The Book of..."

Now, "Tabikh" mean "Dishes", as in cooked foods. And "Tabbakh" means 
"cook" (masc.) so words with the T-B-KH root are the ones to watch 
out for.

>Clifford Wright cites reference to macaroni in his
>Book of Roger but I cannot find anything on a 12th century Sicilian cook
>book.

Oh, the mean Clifford Wright! He is *such* a tease :-)
-- 
Urtatim (that's err-tah-TEEM) al-Tabbakhah
the persona formerly known as Anahita