[Sca-cooks] The Science of Cookery

[Julia Szent-Gyorgyi]

Quoth Alexander Clark:

> Was the choice to translate as "lunch" and "dinner" based on conventional
> modern usage?

Yep. The translator did some good work tracking down things like fish
species, but he's neither a cook nor a historian, so any word that has
changed in meaning or usage in the past four hundred years is
translated according to its modern, "obvious" sense. For the next
edition, it may be good to globally replace "lunch" with "dinner"
(_ebéd_: mid-day meal) and "dinner" with "supper" (_vacsora_: evening
meal).

> Should "stag's child-like antlers" be assumed to mean "velvet antlers"?

It's a basically word-by-word translation of the original. I'm not
exactly familiar with the deer life cycle and the precise English
terms associated with it, but if velvet antlers are a thing, then
that's probably the right term.

> And is "stag" (a red deer in his fifth year) a precise translation, or does
> this mean stag or hart?

"Red deer in his fifth year"? Does someone keep track of deer
birthdays somewhere?

The Hungarian word is _szarvas_, and it's literally 'with horns'.
('Antler' and 'horn' are the same word, which makes sense, as antlers
are just the form that horns take on deer.) In my experience, it means
any sort of deer with antlers.

> Where the menus list "salted starlet", is this supposed to be sterlet, or
> was this one of the occupational hazards for actresses in the period
> theater?

Ha! Or some sort of fish-bird hybrid (starling and sterlet)... No,
it's _kecsege_, which is a species of small sturgeon (Acipenser
ruthenus) also called a sterlet. I'm sure the typo will be corrected
in the next version.

Another global search-and-replace for the menus is "sops" wherever it
mentions soup and bread on the same line. The translator can be
excused for not knowing this one: the term _leves kenyér_ 'liquidy
bread' was already obsolete by Radvánszky's time.

If y'all are poking around on Medieval Cookery's Hungary page anyway
(http://medievalcookery.com/etexts.html?Hungary), I wouldn't mind
commentary on my translations and glossary. They're much shorter than
The Science of Cookery. :-)

Julia
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