[Sca-cooks] recipes from Iran around 1600

lilinah at earthlink.net lilinah at earthlink.net
Thu Jun 10 17:14:58 PDT 2010


On Mon, 17 May 2010 10:47:10 -0700 (PDT), emilio szabo 
<emilio_szabo at yahoo.it> wrote:
>There is an article about 'research on culinary culture of Iran', 
>published in German:
>Bert G. Fragner: "Zur Erforschung der kulinarischen  Kultur Irans", 
>in: Die Welt des
>Islams 23-24 (1984), pp. 320-360.
>
>The authors mentions two old cookery books, one of Ba'urci Bagdadi 
>(1521), the other one from one Master Nurollah. The latter was 
>written down between 1594 and 1618, as far as I can see from page 
>326.
>
>The author publishes 18 pages of recipes on different rice dishes 
>from Nurollah's book in German translation. These also include a few 
>of Nurollah's notes on food preferences, e.g. of Schah Esma'il 
>(1576-78).
>
>On page 326 in footnote 18, the author mentions the edition he based 
>his translation on.
>
>The article is available in the jstor database.

I have a photocopy of a transcription of those two original Persian 
manuscripts that was published a couple decades ago in Iran. I can't 
yet read Persian, and at the moment i'm not 100% sure where my 
photocopy is.

Unfortunately i don't have access to JSTOR, otherwise i'd get my own 
copy of that article.

So i have a request.

Would it be possible for someone with JSTOR access to look over 
Franger's article and let me know if it includes a recipe for Zirbaj 
or anything like it. It will probably be spelled differently in 
German, and it is Zirva in Ottoman Turkish.

Zirbaj/Zirva was originally a Persian dish, adopted by the 'Abbasid 
Arabs. I am comparing the recipe in al-Baghdadi with two very 
different versions in Shirvani's mid-15th c. translation of 
al-Baghdadi with his addition of around 80 recipes. The two recipes 
for Zirva added by Shirvani are very significantly different from 
al-Baghdadi's and clearly not based on his.

So i have been wondering if perhaps they came from 15th c. Persia. 
Since we don't have a 15th c. Persian cookbook, i wonder if there is 
a related recipe in either of those Safavid cookbooks.
-- 
Urtatim [that's err-tah-TEEM]
the persona formerly known as Anahita



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