Gravlax, Permis de sejour (1848)

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Fri Jun 14 01:10:25 UTC 2002


THE CZAR, HIS COURT AND PEOPLE
INCLUDING A TOUR IN NORWAY AND SEDEN
by John S. Maxwell
New York: Baker and Scribner
1848

   I didn't find a "smorgasbord," but there's still stuff here.

Pg. 25:  The bread furnished the traveller is made of rye, flavored with
aniseed.  Besides this, he is served with an abundant supply of oat-cake,
eggs, fresh trout, soup, potatoes, preserved cherries, and plenty of wild
mountain strawberries, cream, milk and butter.

Pg. 26:  The ordinary liquor of the country, a strong, fiery, but pure
spirit, is called _Finkel_.  It is distilled in every farm-house, from
potatoes, and is used the first thing in the morning and the last thing at
night.  It is taken in sickness and in health, and is the Norwegian panacea
for all the ills of life.
(I've seen "Finkel" before, but I can't seem to find it on OED or on the web.
 Spelling?--ed.)

Pg. 77:  A quantity of oatmeal flour, mixed and flavored with aniseed, is
baked in small thin biscuit-like cakes, called _knacken brod_.  This biscuit
is stored away and before the next semi-annual baking, becomes hard as stone,
and adapted only to the fine strong teeth of the peasantry.
   In the northern parts of Sweden Norway and Finland in periods of scarcity,
the inner rind of the fir-tree is taken out, dried, pulverized, and
manufactured into a kind of meal, which is mixed and kneaded with rye or
flour, and baked into bread.  Oatmeal porridge, salt fish, and meat cut into
thin slices and dried in the sun, with _graf lax_, or smoked salmon, and
_rost lax_, broiled salmon, constitute the principal articles of food of the
people in the interior of Sweden.
(OED has 1935 for "gravlax"--ed.)

Pg. 101:  ..._permis de sejour_...
(OED has 1884 for "permis de sejour."  I didn't realize it was an antedate or
I would have copied more--ed.)

Pg. 137:  ...which is known to every native urchin by the singular name of
"belly-gutters."
(Going down the hill on a sledge.  "Belly-gutter" is not in OED.  MOA?--ed.)

Pg. 157:  The week before Lent, which is the Russian carnival, is called
_maslianitza_, or butter week, because the eating of meat is prohibited,
while butter is used as a substitute.
(OED has 1763, then 1923 for "butter week."  "Maslanitza" is mentioned in
that entry, but is not a separate entry?--ed.)

Pg. 277:  Another kind called, from its peculiar form, the ziegel, or brick
tea, consisting of cakes, was sold to the amount of six thousand boxes. (...)
 The Tartars boil it with milk, into a kind of soup.
(OED has 1827, then 1853 for "brick tea."  "Ziegel" is not recorded
there--ed.)

Pg. 284:  The sterlet-soup is considered the greatest of all the luxuries of
the Russian table.
(OED has 1860 for "sterlet soup'?--ed.)

Pg. 329:  The comestibles generally consist of black bread, a soup made of
cabbage called _tsche_, a lump of suspicious-looking meat called _roti_, and
eggs that are universally bad.

Pg. 335:  ...taking us for _Milords Ingles_...



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