[Sca-cooks] Ibn Battula"s Meals

Claire Clarke angharad at adam.com.au
Tue Oct 5 04:26:58 PDT 2010


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Message: 10
Date: Mon, 4 Oct 2010 11:17:02 -0500
From: "Terry Decker" <t.d.decker at att.net>
To: "Cooks within the SCA" <sca-cooks at lists.ansteorra.org>
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Ibn Battula"s Meals
Message-ID: <322001CF1AE343E287AE05E07AE8C4E8 at TerryPC>
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I shouldn't try to follow a thread when I'm tired.

The area you are describing is in the grain growing region of Southeast 
Europe.  While they might or might not have had durum, they would have had 
wheat and I would generally assume that any pasta would be made from some 
variety of wheat, except possibly in times of famine.  Neither buckwheat nor

millet have gluten and any pasta made from them would likely be extremely 
friable.
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Aren't soba noodles made of buckwheat?

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The term macaroni derives from the Italian "maccaroni" meaning "dumpling." 
In the original usage, the word can be used to refer to almost any form of 
pasta.  IIRC, the first reference to tubular pasta shows up in early 15th 
Century Italy (check for references before taking that as gospel), but I 
don't remember that usage being outside of Italy.  In my view, tubular pasta

is a remote possibility.  It is much more likely that the pasta would be 
flat noodles or dumplings.

Bear
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Maccaroni in fifteenth century Italian sources refers to at least two shapes
- something that resembles modern fettucine and something that resembles
modern penne. There may be more that I haven't seen. But my understanding is
that macaroni was the name used for what we would call spaghetti until the
19th century.

Angharad




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