[Sca-cooks] On Nattes

[wheezul at canby.com]

>> Is the English word wafer a variant of the word waffle?  If so, maybe
>> wafer is not the best translation for the word oblaten.  They sound
>> positively nummy, at any rate!
>>
>> Katherine
>
> In English, wafer to a thin crisp cake, biscuit or candy.
>  A waffle is a light batter cake produced in a heated iron.  In
practice, waffles are commonly thicker and softer than wafers.  The
word derives from the Middle Dutch,wafel.  Since Oblate(n) is used to
refer to the consecrated host, it is more correctly translated as
wafer.  Wafer and waffle can both be translated as die Waffle.

>
> It does occur to me that I do not know the meaning of wafel (it might
> translate to wafer) and I do not have a Dutch-English dictionary available
> to me (translation programs do not handle variations in meaning or
> synonyms).  So hopefully someone working in the Dutch corpus can provide
> some enlightenment.
>
> Bear
>

Wecker refers to what I think of as waffles as:

"Ein ander form Goffern oder Eysenküchlein"

So it seems that her word comes from the French gauffre - "gaufrer to
stamp or impress figures on cloth, paper, etc. with tools on which the
required pattern is cut" (from OED) which appears to have come into
English as the textile/hair tool - goffering irons.  I'm interested to
hear what might be known about the dutch.  There is an interesting entry
on Grimm's worterbuch for waffel and waffeleisen.  There seem to be
medieval forms of the word and it seems to be related to the word wave,
which makes sense.

Hmmm, in searching through Grimm's entry on oblaten, it seems to be
interchangeable with hippen which I do have a recipe for!  At least this
starts to give me some ideas.

"ein dunnes geback, flach oder zusammengerollt (= hippe th. 42, 1522,
vergl. oblatenrohrlein), schon im 13. jahrh. bezeugt: ein semel und zwei
oblât. pfrundenordnung des klosters Geisenfeld 424; gefult oblât. Germania
9, 201; nhd. oblaten oder hippen RADLEIN 487b; schweiz. óblade, oflate,
offlete STAUB-TOBLER a. a. o.; oflaten, collyrae FRISIUS 249b; offleten,
huppen, crustulum 347b;"


Katherine