[Sca-cooks] Persian cooking manuscripts

Elaine Koogler kiridono at gmail.com
Thu Dec 30 06:13:32 PST 2010


Anything that you have but cannot post to this list I'd love to have.  So
far as the Shirvani is concerned, I know that somehow Dame Hauviette was
able to get parts of that translated from the old French...and has published
that in her ebook.  You might want to get in touch with her about how she
managed that.

Kiri

On Wed, Dec 29, 2010 at 6:22 PM, <lilinah at earthlink.net> wrote:

> Madhavi wrote:
>
>> My copy of Medieval Arab Cookery has finally arrived and I spent all last
>> evening poring over it. I have seen the book before and read through the
>> recipes but never really *read* the book. It was stuck in my head for some
>> reason that the Description of Familiar Foods was Persian, but the
>> manuscript was actually found in Turkey, written in the Arabic language,
>> and
>> though the original culinary influence was the Persian culture, little
>> seems
>> to have remained of that influence by the writing of the manuscript. I am
>> stumped. Is there, or is there not, an extant medieval cooking manuscript
>> which is truly Persian?
>>
>
> While a copy of The Book of the Description of Familiar Foods is in a
> library in Turkey, the manuscript was originally written in Cairo. It
> includes, among other things, a vastly expanded version of al-Baghdadi, part
> of a confectioners manuscript, and a complete chapter from another book with
> recipes for dishes for invalids and what monks and Christians eat during
> Lent. I have posted here about it, and have some worked out Lenten recipes
> on my website.
>
> All Arabic language cookbooks, as well as the one known pre-17th c. Ottoman
> cookbook, show much evidence of Persian influence, but cannot be trusted to
> reproduce those recipes with Persian names as the Persians would have cooked
> them.
>
>  ...the earliest classical cookbooks in Persian that have survived are two
>> volumes from the Safavid period. The older one is the Kar-nama dar bab-e
>> tabbaki wa shan'at-e an ''Manual on cooking and its craft'', written in
>> 927/1521 by Haji Mohammad-'Ali Bavarchi Baghdadi for an aristocratic patron
>> at the end of the reign of Shah Esmail I Safawi (907-30/1501-24).
>>
> SNIP
>
>> The second surviving Safavid cookbook, Maddat al-hayat, resala dar 'elm-e
>> tabbaki ''The substance of life, a treatise on the art of cooking'', was
>> written about seventy-six years after the Kar-nama by Nur-Allah, a chef for
>> Shah 'Abbas I (r. 996-1038/1588-1629; Af??r, p. xxx).
>>
> SNIP
>
>> However, neither seems to have been translated, dammit.
>>
>
> I have a photocopy of the two cookbooks that was published in Iran in the
> 1980s. It is entirely in Persian, which i don't yet read. However, for the
> time being, i have not been able to find it, because my craft room, where i
> keep my cookbooks, is still in disarray.
>
> The chapter on Polow from the Maddato l-hayat (1594) has been translated
> into German by scholar Bert Fragner. As i have posted here already, i have
> translated all those recipes into English. I suspect he picked that chapter
> because he seems to have a particular interest in the spread and development
> of rice dishes. I am willing to share but cannot post them for copyright
> reasons.
>
> I think many of the recipes from Mehmed ibn Mahmoud Shrivani's mid-15th c.
> Ottoman cookbook and appended to his translation of al-Baghdadi, show even
> stronger Persian influence, since Azerbaijani cuisine is in many ways a
> regional form of Persian (the city of Shirvan is in Azerbaijan, and renowned
> for its cuisine). The Persians lost control of it to the Ottomans. I have a
> CD of the original manuscript, given to me by Charles Perry, but finding
> someone who knows Eski Osmanlica is extremely difficult). I also have a copy
> of Shirvani's whole book transcribed into the Roman alphabet and translated
> into modern Turkish, which i also can't read, but at least is learnable.
>
> About 1/3 of them are available in French, in ''A la table du Grand Turc''
> by Stephane Yerasimos. I translated those (and the whole book) into English.
> I am willing to share but cannot post them for copyright reasons. I have
> written to the French publisher repeatedly asking about the process, since i
> would like to publish my translation of Yerasimo, but i have never gotten a
> single response. Sigh.
> --
> Urtatim [that's err-tah-TEEM]
> the persona formerly known as Anahita
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--Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince



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