[Sca-cooks] Food of the Arabian Nights was Odd Question

[lilinah at earthlink.net]

JIMCHEVAL, you are reading very selectively, in order to avoid having to change your position.

> Nowhere does he suggest that either Burton or Dawood "made things up" nor  
> is he in the least dismissive of their translations overall. To the 
> contrary, he examines them in a meticulous and respectful way. He is offering 
> additional insight into them, not in any sense demolishing them.

In fact, Charles Perry DOES suggest exactly this. Sure, he doesn't specifically say "they made things up". But Perry points out repeatedly where the translators -- including Burton -- were ignorant of the real dish, so they invented foods that were not in the original Arabic nor even in the Arabic cuisine of the period the translator was living.

> We owe these scholars of an earlier time the same respect paid them by  
> Charles Perry himself. A respect one can hope will be granted to Perry when  
> future researchers with access to sources as yet unknown to any of us cast new 
> light on his own work.

I am not disrespecting them nor demolishing them, how could i, they're all dead and gone, i'm merely stating fact, bluntly, but fact. They, including Burton, as pointed out by Perry in multiple places in his essay which you seem to have skipped over, had no idea what dishes were being described, and so they invented food items to fill in for those they didn't understand. This is making stuff up.

On p. 134 he quotes Burton:
"Wail for the little partridges on porringer and plate; 
cry for the ruin of fries and stew well marinate."

Then Perry points out that where Burton has "little partridges" the original has "cranes" - something Burton should have known... and where Burton has "stews well marinate" it actually says partridges. "Fries" are fried dishes... Perry continues: "In the third line, fish are served on loaves of a mysterious bread which Burton renders as 'cakes in piles' " Now, bread is not cake, but it scans the same, so Burton should have just used "bread" - why make up "cake" when it isn't there?

Perry points out that further along in the poem Burton has "This pulse, these potherbs stepped in oil with eysill combinate" where the Arabic has sikbaj, which Burton acknowledges in some footnote. It's a simple preparation often elaborately served, but Burton would not have known how it was prepared or served, only that it was mentioned in other literature. So he replaced it with other stuff -- that he made up.

Perry also points out that 'rizz mufalfal" is not "peppered rice" but, as Burton and Dawood should have known, rice cooked so every grain is separate - it has no pepper in it.

Or, for example, Perry points out the text said "qata'if", and Burton translated that as "fritter" dripping with honey or syrup and melted butter. But it's actually a pancake rolled around sweetened chopped nuts. Not a fritter, yet Burton said it was. He didn't know what the dish was, so he MADE STUFF UP.

There are others that Perry points out, such as zirbaja, rendered as "cumin stew". However, only the 2 earliest recipes -- out of 14 in medieval cookbooks -- include cumin - and this dish, Perry says, is nearly always made with chicken, and additionally it was sugared. So while this isn't entirely pulled out of thin air, this "translation" really does not describe the dish in the story.

If anyone wants to know what people were actually eating during the time of the Arabian Nights, these flawed translations are the wrong place to go for information. Burton is probably good for other reasons, since so many tales have been bowdlerized. But to understand the food, his is definitely not the place to go.

Urtatim