[Sca-cooks] The Science of Cookery

[Glenn Gorsuch]

>
>
>
> From: Julia Szent-Gyorgyi <jpmiaou at gmail.com>
> To: Cooks within the SCA <sca-cooks at lists.ansteorra.org>
>


> 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"
> (_eb?d_: mid-day meal) and "dinner" with "supper" (_vacsora_: evening
> meal).
>
>
Well, it was a team effort.  Bence came up with the common fish names from
the manuscript, I was usually able to track down the actual species.
 Lunch and dinner are definitely modern terms though--I haven't looked at
the menu listings nearly as much.  My brain just usually automatically
translates lunch as "that meal before noon", and dinner/supper as "that
meal after noon" since they were generally (in a period context) dependent
on the amount of light and length of day as anything else.

> 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.
>

Velvet antlers are the antlers newly formed, where the fuzz hasn't worn off
yet.  Are you thinking of the recipe where you make antlers out of
marzipan-ish stuff?  That was pretty tasty, when someone made it for a
local SCA cooking competition entry.


> > 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?
>

Ask those folks who hunt.  Generally, the more points they have the older
the animal, so they can get an idea of the animal's age.  And since it says
"his", I'd go with stag.

>
> 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.
>

(Grin)   Or a typo for "salty starlet", a female entertainment star who
rudely tells off paparazzi who get too annoying.   No, no, I'll add it to
the list for the next edit.  Siiigh.  Endless editing...

>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 keny?r_ 'liquidy
>bread' was already obsolete by Radv?nszky's time.

I do need to go through the menus more, and see just how much
correspondence those dish titles have with the cookbook.

>
> 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
>
>
Do give Julia's work a peek.  Unlike our original translator for _Science_,
Julia IS a cook and historian and knows historical meanings of words, and
is great to correspond with.  Though someday I really want to HEAR her say
y'all in a Hungarian accent.


>
>
> Date: Wed, 25 Oct 2017 13:39:33 +0000
> From: "Sandra J. Kisner" <sjk3 at cornell.edu>
>
>
> Actually, horns and antlers are different things, I believe.  Antlers are
> shed each year, and regrow; horns are permanent.
>
> Sandra
>
> Indeed so, but medieval Hungarian seems to be a....compact language, using
one word for two or more things of similar but different meanings.  Context
means a great deal.   This is exhibited several times in the Science of
Cooking.

--Gwyn/Glenn