[Sca-cooks] Gourd Recipe in the Transylvanian Cookbook

[Julia Szent-Gyorgyi]

> (663) Cook the tree-climbing squash (or gourds) this way.

My aunt gave us a book published in 1981 that reproduces two 17th
century cookbooks: a manuscript from the Zrinyi court in Csáktornya
(now in Croatia) from the middle of the century, and a book printed in
Kolozsvár (Transylvania) at the end of the century. They represent the
later development of the same school of thought as the three
late-16th-century recipe collections (the Prince's cookbook and the
two short manuscripts that I translated). Both 17th century sources
have a recipe for cooking squash in milk:

Z156. To cook squash in milk. Peel it, cut the meat up finely, boil it
in clean water, then drain the water from it using a sieve, cut it up
finely, dilute it with scalded milk, saute some yellow onion into it,
with sour cream, or buttermilk, both are good.

T151. Squash with milk. Peel the squash, cut it up nice and small,
cook it in clean water, drain off the liquid; when it is cooked, pass
it through some kind of a sieve, then dilute it with scalded milk,
stir it well with a spoon, cook it, top it with scrambled eggs,
because that's what it's good with; serve it.

> A case can be made for using New World squash with the recipe.

I think it's almost certain that the recipe was meant for or at least
used for squash originating in the New World. Transylvania was the
perfect place for the new, fleshier vegetables (which are actually
botanically fruits, but nevermind) to take over the old category
without so much as a blip of protest: there were Ottomans all around,
but the war and violence were a step removed, because the principality
was essentially paying off the invaders. This meant that
Transylvanians not only had access to new foodstuffs, but also had the
freedom to try them, unlike their family and neighbors to the west,
who were too busy fleeing for their lives to experiment with new
foods.

> I would
> suggest using a bench knife rather than a shingle (wood or slate?

Wood. The word used is not applied to slate (and I don't recall ever
seeing a slate roof anywhere in Hungary).

> What is a bridge?

It's explained in the glossary to the 17c cookbooks: "according to a
verse by Oroszhegyi Mihály (1656), at serving-time, cooks ‘put a
little pine bridge on
top of the bowl’; the roast capon, meat, etc. is placed on this
plank." It's a serving method: the sauce or vegetable goes in a bowl,
the accompanying meat or other protein goes on a plank or platter
straddling the bowl.

To inform the interpretation of the old recipe, consider the modern
dish of _tökfőzelék_ "squash stew". The recipe in Horváth Ilona (the
Hungarian equivalent of Joy of Cooking: the cookbook that everyone has
a copy of): "1 kg grated [julienned] squash, 2 T oil, 1 small onion, 2
dl sour cream, 1 T flour, salt, paprika, 1 bunch dill, a little
vinegar. Saute the grated onion in the oil, sprinkle with a
knife-tip-full of paprika, add the squash and salt it. Cover and cook
in its own juices until the squash is tender, flavoring it with a
little vinegar and the finely minced dill. Finally thicken it with the
flour mixed with the sour cream."

(I don't use paprika, and I use garlic instead of onion -- or better
yet, if available, I use the liquid from half-sour garlic dill pickles
instead of the vinegar.)

A traditional modern Hungarian main meal consists of a soup followed
by some type of vegetable main dish (_főzelék_ "that which has been
cooked") with a protein side dish (_feltét_ "up put, put on top").
There are traditional pairings of vegetable and protein, and squash
with eggs is definitely one of them.

Julia
/\ /\
>*.*<