[Sca-cooks] ALMODROTE WHICH IS CAPIROTADA

[Craig Daniel]

On Tue, May 17, 2011 at 3:49 PM, Suey <lordhunt at gmail.com> wrote:
> A while back someone asked what was my source when I stated that almodrote
> is capirotada or something like that. Nola titled his recipe for almadrote
> as: ALMODROTE QUE ES CAPIROTADA. He used the almodrote, the garlic cheese
> sauce as the "cape" to cover the dish. See:
> www.florilegium.org/files/FOOD-MANUSCRIPTS/Guisados1-art.rtf
> Suey

Confusingly, "capirotada" is a modern food that has absolutely nothing
relevant in common with the dish in de Nola. Much like blancmange, we
need to specify that we mean the period savory dish rather than the
modern dessert when we make statements about it existing in period and
what it is like; the modern capirotada is basically a bread pudding.

There are other citations for "Almodrote" (it's the Castillian name
for "Almedroch", which also appears in Sent Sovi) that are not in that
chicken dish, so rather than "almodrote is capirotada" I think it's
more precise to say "almodrote is a sauce that is used in (at least
one version of) a dish called 'capirotada' (but has nothing to do with
modern capirotada)." That said, naming the dish "Almodrote which is
capirotada" is a slightly strange choice except for the fact that, in
derivation, "capirotada" appears to be an adjective derived from the
past participle of a verb I have not encountered as an actual verb.
(Modernly it's obviously only a noun, but Castillian regularly permits
adjectives to be used as nouns, so this is not a surprising
development.) It thus also seems plausible that to de Nola,
"Capirotada" was an adjective describing how the sauce was utilized in
that dish, rather than the name of the dish itself.

 - Jaume