[Sca-cooks] Odd Question

[JIMCHEVAL at aol.com]

Not in this case I don't.  

My point is very simple: whatever one thinks of the research here, or the  
English term chosen for a dish which really had no equivalent in the Western 
 world, the translator was NOT just "making stuff up". The fact that his 
research  turned out to be less accurate than that of future researchers is 
not  unexpected. But he made a serious effort with what resources he had at 
hand to  understand what these dishes were and to communicate that to his 
readers. If  anything, he went further with such efforts than some modern food 
writers, who  are often content, for instance, to pass on ideas from Le Grand 
d'Aussy or other  previous writers without doing fresh research to be sure 
these are right (often,  they aren't).
 
There's a huge difference between working within the limitations of the  
knowledge of one's own time and "making stuff up." I haven't claimed he got  
everything right - though his description of herissa seems fair  enough:
 
http://leslefts.blogspot.com/2012/01/harissa-history.html
 
But it's simply not fair to say someone who didn't have access to later  
research was simply fabricating facts (as in fact some food writers seem to 
do,  even today) when, to the contrary, it's quite clear that he was trying to 
 research and understand the terms he was using.

 
Jim  Chevallier
_www.chezjim.com_ (http://www.chezjim.com/) 

Beyond Apicius (2):  recipes from other Roman sources
_http://leslefts.blogspot.com/2014/05/beyond-apicius-2-recipes-from-other.ht
ml_ 
(http://leslefts.blogspot.com/2014/04/beyond-wine-water-and-beer-what-else.html) 


In a message dated 5/13/2014 2:52:32 P.M. Pacific Daylight Time,  
lilinah at earthlink.net writes:


Burton knew that Sikbaj was "Queen of Dishes" but he didn't  really know 
what was in it or how it was served. I'm sure he did his best,  because he was 
personally invested in the culture. But even he hadn't read Ibn  Sayyar 
al-Warraq's cookbook to know what REALLY was cooked in 9th c.  Baghdad.

You really need to attend to Charles  Perry...

Urtatim
_______________________________________________
Sca-cooks  mailing  list
Sca-cooks at lists.ansteorra.org
http://lists.ansteorra.org/listinfo.cgi/sca-cooks-ansteorra.org