[Sca-cooks] Arabic dish with a name similar to Brustinga?

Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius adamantius1 at verizon.net
Sat Jan 31 11:34:19 PST 2009


On Jan 31, 2009, at 1:22 PM, David Walddon wrote:

> Forwarded with permission from the Madrone Culinary Guild List to  
> see if anyone out there has so information on the below.
>
> Please reply here and I will forward or to erain at liripipe dot com
>
> Thanks
>
> Eduardo
>
>
>>
>> I’m trying to find further information on an early Italian dish  
>> called in the latin ‘Brustinga’.  One offhanded reference implies  
>> that the name may be of Arabic origin as in the dishes Limonia/ 
>> Limuniyya and Romania/Rummaniyya (yumm pomegranate chicken!!!).
>>
>>
>>
>> Have any of you come across any dishes of similar name?  the  
>> Italian dish is a kind of pie filled with a mix of cheese, flour &  
>> eggs w/saffron, but that may not have much to do with the original  
>> Arabic dish, as some of these dishes mutated beyond recognition,  
>> keeping only an echo of the original name….

FWIW, a Google search for references to "brustinga" produces a first  
or very early hit on an article in pdf format by a Marianne Bouchon,  
from 1952, entitled "Latin de Cuisine". It's in French, and as far as  
I can figure (my French isn't good), it's saying the dish is covered  
in Zambrini's Libro della cucina under "de la pastringa".

Which in itself is interesting, in that it uses a similar consonant  
transposition found in the shift from Turkish to whatever in bastourma/ 
pastrami... except pastrami is alleged to be a synthetic word, and not  
Italian, so I'm not sure if that's relevant.

http://documents.irevues.inist.fr/bitstream/2042/2928/1/04+TEXTE.pdf

Adamantius








"Most men worry about their own bellies, and other people's souls,  
when we all ought to worry about our own souls, and other people's  
bellies."
			-- Rabbi Israel Salanter



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