[Sca-cooks] Assumptions in modern scholarship

[Galefridus Peregrinus]

Yes, I've looked at Pliny's comments, which seem to confirm the pounding 
part procedure. It's the lengthy boil (typically 2-3 hours in the modern 
rural Middle East) that concerns me most. That strikes me as quite 
expensive because of the use of fuel. Possibly firewood or other fuels 
were more readily available than I think.


-- Galefridus

> Date: Thu, 1 Mar 2018 21:25:00 -0600
> From: "Terry Decker" To: "Cooks within the SCA" Subject: Re: 
> [Sca-cooks] Assumptions in modern scholarship
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> I know what you mean.  I keep hitting academics misstating facts about 
> Solanum tuberosum (the white potato).  And every few years, I have to 
> rewrite my lecture paper on potatoes thanks to some of those same 
> academics. For myself, I use the best available information and stand 
> ready to shift my stance with better information or sources.  I also 
> try to follow the basic rule that any statement of fact without 
> reference or source is questionable and if it is pertinent to your 
> studies--question it.  Once I find a questionable fact that challenges 
> (or I want to incorporate into) my work, I start trying back-tracking 
> to the original source.
>
> One of the fun ones I ran down is Trager's statement that the first 
> bananas sold in London was in a grocery in 1633.  First, the story is 
> inaccurate, there was a plantain (the Elizabethan banana) found in 
> 1999 during the excavation of a mid-16th Century midden in London, 
> which immediately suggests that some bananas were being sold in London 
> prior to 1633.  Second, Thomas Johnson, the grocer who completed the 
> 1633 edition of Gerard's Herbal, received a live banana plant with 
> fruit from the Bahamas.  He displayed the plant in his shop and sold 
> the fruit.  Bananas don't show up again in the literature until they 
> started being imported in the early 20th Century.  One of the people 
> who found the Tudor banana is supposedly writing a paper on the Tudor 
> London fruit market.
>
> For your particular problem, you will probably want to check out 
> Pliny's Natural Histories Book 18 Chapter 29 on Alica.  One of the 
> methods of making false alica is pretty much the method of preparing 
> bulgur wheat.  While Pliny equates the origin of alica to around the 
> time of Pompey the Great, the Greeks had a similar dish, but I have 
> been unable to locate a contemporary reference.
>
> There are a number of references in papers on Neolithic archeology to 
> parching cereals (to separate the hull from the grain), which would 
> constitute pre-cooking, after which the grain was used either whole or 
> crushed to be cooked or formed into bread .   The wheats commonly 
> associated with these sites are einkorn and spelt, which along with 
> emmer are tightly hulled and require additional processing beyond 
> threshing to remove the glumes.  A later process of softening the 
> hulls by soaking (or parboiling), then abrading or cracking the grain 
> to remove the hull is more difficult place, but it may be the origin 
> of the process to make bulgur wheat.  I can place that to the 17th 
> Century and it's probably earlier, but how much earlier I have no 
> idea.  The process is used modernly to clean oats.
>
> Bear