[Sca-cooks] Sixteenth Century Turkish
lilinah at earthlink.net
lilinah at earthlink.net
Mon Apr 5 18:00:31 PDT 2010
I wrote:
><< Second, ...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. >>
Emilio remarked:
>Thanks for pointing to the dangers of using these reports. However, do we
>acually have a picture of what these reports say about food habits?
>Please let me know.
Here are my own poor miserable translations from
Stephane/Stefanos Yerasimos, A la table du Grand
Turc. Please pardon my errors. These were in 15th
and 16th c. French.
-----
Bertrandon de la Broquiere, the gentleman carver
(ecuyer tranchant) of Philippe the Good, Duke of
Burgundy, who visited Edirne in March 1433, was
the sole witness of a meal with the Ottoman
Sultan. Murad II dined with the ambassador of the
Duke of Milan, a lord from Bosnia, and some
Wallachian gentlemen:
"And before the aforesaid lord had come in the
aforesaid place, into our midst were brought at
least one hundred bowls of tin and in each one
was a piece of mutton and some rice () Then the
aforesaid lord sat down, and when he was seated
() food was brought to him, and a cloth of silk
placed before him. And then a piece of vermeil
leather completely round and quite thin/fine was
placed before him, in place of a tablecloth, for
the custom is such that he eats only on such
cloths of leather. And then they bore meat to him
on two great golden platters, and as soon as he
was served those who were appointed forth brought
the bowls that I mentioned above, which were
carried to this place, and they carried and
served it to the people who were there, that is
from 4 to 4, one bowl, and had within some very
light rice and a piece of mutton without a bit of
bread nor anything to drink."
From Le Voyage d'outre-mer de Bertrandon del la
Broquiere, premier ecuyer trenchant et conseiller
de Phillipe le Bon, duc de Bourgogne, published
and annotated by Ch. Schefer, Paris, 1892, p.
190-192.
-----
Foreign ambassadors were also invited to this
meal when they came to present their letters of
faith in the sultan, thanks to whom we have
several descriptions. The oldest is that of
Cornelius de Schepper, ambassador of Ferdinand of
Austria who presented himself to the Divan in
June 1533:
"After we had saluted the (pashas) like brothers
and friends of the king, a stool was brought in
the middle between us and here upon this a great
round platter of silver in the form of a little
table, having a bit of concavity in the center
and at the extremities; bread was brought which
was placed upon the aforesaid platter, near to
each of us. Afterwards a cloth of silk of diverse
colors covered the breast of the pashas and
another upon our own. Following this washing was
given first to Ibrahim, after to Ayas, to Cassim,
to Lord Hierosme [Hieronymus Laski, the first
ambassador] and finally to me, Cornille
Scepperus. Little round dishes were brought, such
as are customarily filled with vinegar when
eating fish in Germany, some of those dishes
containing cucumbers preserved in vinegar and
some rose preserves. Each of us was given a
little napkin, and to every two of us a knife,
and to each his own spoon which was of wood:
whereupon Ibrahim Pasha declared to us that the
Turks used no other spoons but those of wood.
After that a dish was brought full of flesh of
hens which were divided and cold, and when
Ibrahim Pasha gave us the command to eat: which I
did, even though my appetite was quite small. The
said dish removed, another was brought full of
diverse birds; then another of whole hens; and
when some dish was brought, the preceding was
always removed. Afterwards, other courses was
brought of rice with lemons, rice cooked with
pomegranates, others with sugar, and finally
still others, and then drink was brought to
Ibrahim Pasha in a vessel of turquoise stone
which was on a platter of silver. While he drank,
we and the pashas remained seated. Next, drink
was brought to the pashas and to us, in a cup of
silver, which was on a platter similarly of
silver; it was the sweet water which is called
sherbet."
From Missions diplomatiques de Corneille
Duplicius de Schepper, dit Scepperus, ambassadour
() by M. le baron Saint-Genois () and G.-A.
Yssel de Schepper, Memoires de l'Academie royale
des sciences, des letters, et des beauxarts de
Belgique, vol. XXX, Brussels, 1854, p. 170.
-----
Jerome Maurand, Priest of Antibes, who
accompanied the French envoy Polin de la Garde,
received at the palace in August 1544, was
entitled to the dinner served to the attendants
of the ambassadors:
"First from one of the portals which are on a
level with the place [courtyard?] () came forth
a Turk, who I think to be like a butler at home,
dressed in green velvet embroidered with gold,
who had in his hands a baton; two Turks followed
behind him: the one carried a very handsome pile
carpet, as long as 15 or 16 hands, as wide as
six; the other carried a very beautiful long and
wide table cloth of cotton, with a longiera
similar to the table cloth but less wide. The one
who carried the carpet spread it out all along
the ground: the other spread upon it the
tablecloth and put all around the longiera. Then
followed two other Turks, bearing a great basket
full of quite white flat breads, and in his hand
a box of very lovely wooden spoons; the flat
breads were put in order on the table cloth,
followed by the spoons. Two other Turks followed,
richly dressed in silk; one held a great glass
container with a capacity of ten pints, filled
with a water made artificially of sugar, pears,
and other fruits, which is a thing very good and
delicious to drink and quite substantial; the
other had in his hands two very beautiful beakers
of clay, made as those which come from Pisa or
Montaldo. Next came, fourteen quite young boys,
two by two, vested in floral brocade, belted with
sashes of gold: they had their hair arranged on
their foreheads, such as is worn by the women of
Provence; and on their heads they wore a very
pretty yellow bonnet pointed on top. The first
two carried two dishes of cooked yellow rice and
two of white rice without broth, as long as
vermicelli; the two following carried two dishes
each, two of semolina with carved chicken, and
two of fritters with sugar. Two others carried
each two plates of cut up roast chicken; two more
each carried two plates of roast quails and
partridges, also cut up; the last two carried two
plates of pistachios preserved in sugar. And all
these dishes were placed in an instant upon the
tablecloth. One set the gentlemen to dine all
around, in the Turkish fashion; the one kneeling,
the other seated on the ground, as best he was
able. When one wished to drink, he who held the
glass jar of artificial water and the cups,
giving to each a full cup and not more."
From Itineraire de Jerome Maurand d'Antibes a
Constantinople (1544), Italian text published for
the first time with an introduction and a
translation [into French] by Leon Dorez, Paris,
1901, p. 219-223.
My Note: The item identified as longiera is a
sort of napkin of fine linen, embroidered with
silk and gold, that covered the laps of multiple
diners. Apparently diners often had three napkin
like items: one like a towel dangling over their
right shoulder, a small one for wiping the
fingers, and the long multiple diner lap cover.
From what i can tell they often all have the same
name, although i've found two different names
applied to the same items...
-----
The documents available from the 15th and 16th
centuries show us an augmentation and a
diversification of culinary items, but, at the
same time, a certain conservatism tied perhaps to
a stricter adherence to religious precepts. We
have little information to follow the evolution
of the culinary tastes of the sultans and the
outside testimonies remain rarities. The notable
exception is the narrative of Albertus Bobovius
[Woyciech Bobowski], Polish by birth, who spent
19 years at Topkapi, between 1638 and 1657
[serving sultans Murad IV, Ibrahim I and Mehmed
IV], as a page renamed Ali Ufki Bey, who
described the meal of the sultan:
"The Great Lord eats alone or in the hasodah (his
private apartments) or in the garden. The meats
that are served him ordinarily every day are
mutton boiled or roasted in small pieces as large
as larks, sausages of spit roasted mutton, a
couple of roast pigeons, a hen cooked with rice
or lamb roasted in the oven in its season, sweet
pastes of all sorts and different compositions of
which the best is worth nothing to our taste.
They call these dishes baklavah or ma'muniyye,
rice cooked with milk called soudlu ash, rice
pounded with sugar named muhallebi, and after he
is filled with all sorts of drugs which he eats
without drinking, he is presented a large cupful
of hoschab or water of grapes, of peaches, of
apricots, or of cornelians, or of another sort of
fruit."
In spite of the biased character of the
description and the constancy of certain dishes,
the tastes as well as the order of the meals
seems to be noticeably modified since the 15th
century.
Quote from Albertus Bobovius, Topkapi, relation
du serail du Grand Seigneur, edition presented
and annotated by Annie Berthier & Stephane
Yerasimos, Sindbad/Actes Sud, coll. "La
Biblioteque Turque", Paris-Arles, 1999, p.
110-111.
-----
One century later, Bobowski/Bobovius/Ali Ufki Bey
described the meal of the subaltern pages:
"The ordinary food of the pages of the greater
and of the lesser chamber of the great seraglio
consists of pottages/soups and meats; for the
meat, they are served nearly every day of the
same and prepared in the same way that they call
souyousch of flesh of mutton without boiling; for
those that are pottages/soups, they are often
diversified, for sometimes bodday chourbasy or
pottage/soup of wheat, sometimes of zyryab or
pottage/soup made of flour and raisins of Corinth
[dried currants] and saffron, sometimes of zerdeh
or pottage/soup made of rice, honey, and saffron,
and sometimes of ekshy ash or pottage/soup made
of rice, raisins of Corinth, and honey; they eat
two times a day, namely at nine hours in the
morning and at three hours after noon, and at
each meal they are served a dish of meat and a
vast basin of one of the sorts of pottage/soup
here above."
Ibid, p. 49.
-------
Comments in square brackets are mine. In the
final quote, i have both pottage and soup,
because often these are thick and substantial,
like Persian aush, and more a pottage than a soup
which could have ingredients in a broth. But
since i am not quite certain which these were, i
haven't yet made the decision which word to use.
--
Urtatim [that's err-tah-TEEM]
the persona formerly known as Anahita
More information about the Sca-cooks
mailing list