[Sca-cooks] Sixteenth Century Turkish

[lilinah at earthlink.net]

emilio wrote:
>I assume that there is more on Turkish eating and drinking in the 
>numerous reports of travellers to the holy land, of ambassadors and 
>in chronicles.

First, what was eaten in the Holy Land, and what Turks, i.e., the 
upper Ottoman echelons, would be rather different. The Holy Land ate 
Arabic food.

Second, since most ambassadors, etc. were (a) not usually 
particularly excited about eating foreign food, (b) not familiar with 
what they were eating, and often gave faulty descriptions, and (c) 
not necessarily particularly interested in talking about food in 
detail and gave sketchy reports.

>For instance, there is a "Neuwe Chronica t?rkischer Nation", printed 
>in 1590, which is up online at www.digitale-sammlungen.de. Among 
>other things, there is a report about a wedding.
>http://www.digitale-sammlungen.de/~db/0002/bsb00029261/images/
>
>?Den 23. May zu Morgen sind die Vezier vnd Hof Officier zum Patscha 
>zusammen kommen (sind Gey? vnd Schaaff F??/ vnd essens die T?rcken 
>wie bey vns ein Eyer im Schmaltz) solche Spei? hat der Breutigam 
>seiner Schwieger der Sultanin selber auch geschickt/ welche dem 
>Breutigam vnd der Braut widerumb 150. andere Speisen bringen lassen 
>(...)?. (p. 535; BSB-Pdf 546)

I'm not monolingual, i know French and Bahasa Indonesia and am 
learning Arabic, but i am afraid my German is sketchy. I can 
translate things given enough time, but i'm feeling lazy and would 
prefer you to translate. Also a lot of special characters do not come 
through in USAmerican e-mail. I can figure out some of them, but i am 
not so sure of some others. Please write them out (e.g., u with 
umlaut can be written ue).

>Does anybody recognise the dish which is mentioned here and which is 
>called "Patscha"?

A Pasha is an official... This seems to say that on the morning of 
May 23 the Vizier and court officer came together with the Pasha... 
and then something about eggs cooked in fat. This may be the dish 
called Cilber, although the name isn't given, which is eggs and 
onions cooked in fat and usually served with yogurt.

Please translate the text so those among us who don't know German can 
understand.

>As for the drinking, a late 16th c. report of a dinner during an 
>audience says that they drank water mixed with rosewater and sugar 
>(printed in the Glasgow Hakluyt ed., vol. VI, p. 98ss.)
>
>George Sandys (early 17th c.): "their usual drink is pure water, yet 
>they have sundry sherbets ... some made of sugar and lemons, some of 
>violets, and the like, whereof some are mixed with amber, which the 
>richer sort dissolve thereinto. The honey of Scio is excellent for 
>that purpose and they make another of the juice of rainsins." 
>(quoted from the notes on a travelogue).

Travellers seem to have liked the various sharbat (its plural, 
singular is sharab), i guess sugar goes over well. But reports i have 
read (there are quite a few quoted in Stephane Yerasimos, A la table 
du Grand Turc) give inadequate descriptions of dishes (a dish of 
roast chicken with rice... not enough for reconstruction).

Hans Dernschwam (who i am struggling to translate, he uses almost 
phonetic Bohemian German quite different from what i learned in my 
semester of modern German) gives a little more description than most 
embassies, but usually not enough to recreate dishes. Plus he begins 
his discussion of food in Kostantiniyye by saying, "The Turks eat 
poor miserable food..."
-- 
Urtatim [that's err-tah-TEEM]
the persona formerly known as Anahita