[Sca-cooks] Thoughts on Adam Gopnik's Sweet Revolution in the New Yorker - Blancmange

[Suey]

Sorry to be so tardy in repliing to this item. i am just catching up 
with email messages after an operation and post op complications.
James wrote:
> Adam Gopnik?s excellent piece on the evolution of desert and the role of
> pastry chefs in culinary innovation raises interesting questions. Based on
> interviews with prominent Catalan chefs who see themselves as the inheritors
> of the French mantle of desert, the article explores the relationship
> between savory and sweet. That exploration, however, dates much further back
> in history to the Persian and then the Ottoman kitchen, with its high degree
> of specialization and separate guild for pastry chefs. Sweet and savory was
> not limited to deserts but played a prominent role in Persian and Ottoman
> main dishes. But to stick to deserts, Europe was exposed to Ottoman playing
> with sweet-savory combinations as far back as the 14th century when it
> became enchanted with tavuk g?g?s (chicken breast), shredded chicken in a
> sweet milk pudding. Known as blanc manger or white pudding, tavuk g?g?s
> maintained its chicken content in contemporary Turkish cuisine but lost it
> in Europe over the centuries.
>
Calero, an editor of Villena, maintains that it originated in Provence. 
The name is adapted into English and Spanish from French meaning "white 
eating." Hiatt believes the recipes in Form of Curye are similar to 
Apicius recipe "Cibarium//Album", an almond based sweet sauce. Although 
the basic ingredients, almond milk, rice and sugar, came to Europe 
through the Arabs, Perry suspects that only the name, "Harisa de Arroz" 
(Rice Harisa) can be attributed to the Arabs. Hispano-Arab recipes show 
no record of blancmange. The first is in the Catalan text Sent Sovi from 
the 13th Century not the 14th.
Suey