[Sca-cooks] Sixteenth Century Turkish

[lilinah at earthlink.net]

Regarding the feasting and food offerings during 
Ottoman royal circumcision festivals and 
accompanying parades of sugar sculptures, 
Stephane Yerasimos wrote, in ''A la table du 
Grand Turc'' (my rough translation):

The common people ... had the right to two public 
demonstrations that mixed spectacle and 
sustenance. One of them was the parade of 
sculptures made of sugar. Plants, animals, and 
human figures, too - another example of the 
transgression of an interdiction of Islam made 
possible by the festival - sculpted sometimes in 
monumental sizes, were carried to the Hippodrome. 
The account of 1539 catalogs the inventory: 64 
castles, 2 tents, 1 tightrope walker, 1 cannon, 1 
water wheel, 18 Imperial daisies, a vendor's 
stall, 1 cypress, 6 violets, 5 peacocks, 1 stork, 
11 rooster, 3 mermaids, 2 fountains with jets of 
water, 10 galleys, 5 galleons, 9 lanterns, 10 
giants, 4 elephants, 2 rhinoceroses, 43 horses, 3 
donkeys, 2 oxen, 2 goats, 3 rams, 16 popes, 1 
churches, 53 galaxies, flowers, 872 small birds, 
and plants, 308 narcissus, 281 roses, 141 fish.
[my note: many sugar sculptures were life size or close to it]

A similar list drawn up on the occasion of the 
circumcision festival of 1582, shows few 
differences: one of the rhinoceroses was replaced 
by a giraffe because between the two dates one of 
these animals brought to Istanbul caused a 
sensation, and the popes disappeared - the list 
specifies "church without popes" - because 
between times the society, become more 
conservative, rejected human representationŠ The 
consistency in this catalog, which might appear 
at first glance to be by chance, shows that the 
plan of festivals followed not only sacrificed 
nothing to form, but also to taste. Besides 
sugar, of which 9,595 kg were dispensed, a total 
weight of 5,644 kg of musk, anise, bitter 
oranges, lemons, coriander, almonds, and 
pistachios were used for the confection of the 
statues. All this cost more than 6,000 pieces of 
gold, of which 1,200 constituted the remuneration 
of the Jewish guild of confectioners, charge with 
the fabrication.

After having made the tour of the Hippodrome, 
these figures were delivered as [pâture = lit. 
pasturage, grazing land] to the population, who 
thus divided up more than 15 tons of sweetmeats.

== End Quote ==

Note that at that time the cost of a kilo of 
sugar was approximately 20 times the cost of a 
kilo of sheep meat
-- 
Urtatim [that's err-tah-TEEM]
the persona formerly known as Anahita