[Sca-cooks] Lent is coming!

Rebecca Friedman rebeccaanne3 at gmail.com
Sun Feb 26 21:03:26 PST 2012


On Sun, Feb 19, 2012 at 5:57 PM, David Friedman <ddfr at daviddfriedman.com>wrote:

>
> "Precedella" sounds as though it might be Italian.Mine are from an Italian
> cookbook and calledBrazzatelle. My daughter assures me that she has
> linguistic evidence that they are bagels, but I'm not sure how conclusive
> it is. And to my ear, "Precedella" and "Brazzatelle" sound as though they
> could be related.
>
> As per your request, O My Father...

The singular is Brazzatella, I think. In Florio's Italian-English
dictionary (http://www.pbm.com/~lindahl/florio/), the word Brazzatella is
not given. However, Brazzetto is given as “as Braccietto,” suggesting that
“zz” went to “cci” which given what I've seen of dialects is not uncommon. (
http://www.pbm.com/~lindahl/florio/search/082r.html) This does occur fairly
frequently in the dictionary.

Checking for Bracciatella, I found that that did not exist but that
Bracciatello did, and furthermore that it was given as “a kind of roule or
bisket bread, we call them round simnels.” (Again, I've run into a lot more
masculine -o to feminine -a changes than I would ever have expected before
I started working with early sources; for example, Braccietto, which had
gotten me there, is listed as “as Brachetta”) All this is at
http://www.pbm.com/~lindahl/florio/search/082l.html

There is an early Italian dictionary, Lessicografia della Crusca in rete, (
http://193.205.158.203/index.jsp) which has webbed editions of the
dictionary starting from 1612. The 1612 edition has Bracciatello listed as
“a type of large ciambella” (
http://www.lessicografia.it/Controller?c1=350;-7;3;-21159276;212722725;&c2=129;-39;3;40;69;1;130;32;5;40;66;1;129;-39;65;40;69;4;130;1025;5;40;75;13;130;27;3;652660136;1238720506;&qi=&qr=null&num=20&o=105;-44382125;-308820822;&q1=bracciatello&EdCrusca1=1)
and the second (1623) edition has Ciambella listed as a variant on
Berlingozzo “the same dough made in the form of a ring, we call Ciambella.”
(
http://www.lessicografia.it/Controller?c1=350;-7;3;-21159276;212722725;&c2=129;-39;3;40;69;1;130;32;5;40;66;1;129;-39;65;40;69;4;130;1025;5;40;75;13;130;27;3;652660136;1238720506;&qi=&qr=null&num=20&o=105;-44382125;-308820822;&q1=ciambella&EdCrusca2=1
)

Since I didn't need to know the dough, just the shape, I refrained from
looking up Berlingozzo. But that's my evidence for thinking that
Brazzatelle are made "in the form of a ring", so are closer to bagels than
pretzels.

Rebecca bint Cariadoc, who is now vanishing back to lurking.



> I believe modern pretzels, at least the ones in the King Arthur flour
> book, are boiled and then baked, as are bagels--in fact, the book treats
> them as variants of the same recipe. But I think those are soft pretzels
> and don't know how the crunchy kind are made.
>
> David/Cariadoc
> www.daviddfriedman.com
> daviddfriedman.blogspot.com/
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