[Sca-cooks] Odd Question

[lilinah at earthlink.net]

JIMCHEVAL at aol.com wrote:
> That's certainly closer:
> _http://books.google.com/books?id=wzc_AAAAYAAJ&dq=%22Barmecide's%20Feast%22%20intitle%3Aarabian&pg=PA305#v=onepage&q&f=false_ 
> [ http://books.google.com/books?id=wzc_AAAAYAAJ&dq="Barmecide's%20Feast"%20intitle:arabian&pg=PA305#v=onepage&q&f=false ]
> 
> Even if many retellings omit the lists of specific foods. But even this is  
> only about two pages long.

I would not rely on Lady Burton's edition of her husband's translation. She found some of his writings quite scandalous, and burned his unpublished translation of the Scented Garden after his death.

Frankly, until A.J. Arberry translated al-Baghdadi's cookbook, first published in 1939, the components of many of the dishes mentioned in the tales were unknown. Therefore translators made up all sorts of inaccurate stuff to replace the unfamiliar dishes. I don't know what that passage *really* said, but I see in this translation "meat pudding", which is not a particularly Middle Eastern dish, but something a Victorian English person could relate to.

There is an interesting essay by Charles Perry, "A Thousand and One Fritters: Food in the Arabian Nights" in the book "Medieval Arab Cookery" - which he also gives as a speaker - about the mistranslations of food terms in the Arabian Nights. Here's a video of his recent talk (Jan of this year) - note that it is about 1 hour long. He is an entertaining speaker, besides being knowledgeable, so if you watch it, it won't be wasted time.
http://chscsite.org/a-thousand-and-one-fritters/

Urtatim