[Sca-cooks] Assumptions in modern scholarship

[Terry Decker]

Archeological evidence suggests that in some locales the chaff is used as 
the fuel for cooking and for the Middle East, I expect that dried dung was 
commonly used.  The paper Johnna referenced is interesting, but I need to 
give it more than a cursory examination.

Bear

-----Original Message----- 
From: Galefridus Peregrinus
Sent: Saturday, March 3, 2018 4:34 PM
To: sca-cooks at lists.ansteorra.org
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Assumptions in modern scholarship

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
> Message-ID: <2F7432A3EFE84960A75FCB469E701050 at Vishnu>
> Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset="UTF-8";
> reply-type=response
>
> 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
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