Tagine/Tajine (1924); Gazelles' Horns/Shoes; What Goes Up...

Bapopik at AOL.COM Bapopik at AOL.COM
Tue May 7 00:42:01 UTC 2002


   Tagine (tajine) is not in the OED or Merriam-Webster.  There's really no
other word for it.  It's a staple of Moroccan cookery.  If I ask fellow
tourists next week, I'll bet that nearly everyone has been to Morocco  and
knows what a "tagine" is.
   Yet, "banoffee"--which didn't even exist until about 30 years ago--made
the OED first.
   How old is "tagine"?  It's not in MEDIEVAL  ARAB COOKERY (2000).  I
checked the Making of America databases for tagine/tajine/tagin/tajin and
didn't see it.  It wasn't in Poole's Plus (now re-titled Nineteenth Century).
 And there certainly were articles on Morocco and North Africa in these 1800s
databases.

MOROCCO
THE ILLUSTRATED GUIDE
edited by Marcel Monmarche
Paris: Libraire Hachette
1924

Pg. 48 (Cooking): ...a low round table, _teifor_, on which are laid out:
_bestila_, buttered rolls, stuffed with minced pigeon and sprinkled with
sugar and cinnamon bark; a dish of well-roasted breast of mutton, _mkalli_;
sundry dishes or _tajin_ of fowls and pigeons dressed with butter or oil,
apples, artichokes, carrots, according to season; honey cakes, _halua_; meat
or milk _cuscus_; _seksu_; as dessert, very frequently _mehannesha_, a flaky
almond-paste roll.  (...)  THen after drinking one sip of coffee, several
cups of tea are partaken of while eating small cakes of almond-paste, _Kab el
ghezal_, or of semolina, _ghribia_.  As a set off to this menu of grand town
_diffas_, the tribes eat slices of mutton, on skewers, roast mutton, _meshu_,
and cuscus, _seksu_.


THE FIRE OF DESERT FOLK:
THE ACCOUNT OF A JOURNEY THROUGH MOROCCO
by Ferdinand Ossendowski
New York: E. P. Dutton & COmpany
1926

Pg. 48:  It will be small consolation to him that the black monster is deft
in preparing _kouskous_, _seffa_, the various _tazhin_, _meshwi_ and other
dainties of the Berber kitchen.

Pg. 348 (Glossary):
Seffa--Sweet _kouskous_.
Taam--Sweet _Kouskous_.


A WAYFARER IN MOROCCO
by ALys Lowth
London: Methuen & Co.
1929

Pg. 205 (Chapter XXX FOOD IN MOROCCO):  Arabs make their bread sometimes of
barley-flour, sometimes of semolina--which they call _smead_--and sometimes
of meal mixed with crushed dates, oil, and water.

Pg. 206:  Savoury, highly seasoned forcemeat balls called _Kiftah_ and
_Kabobs_ are sold, smoking hot, in the markets; but even if they were no
"bags of mystery," the clouds of flies ever hovering over the stalls of their
confectioners would divorce from them all the attraction of their appetizing
odor.


FOLLOWING MY NOSE THROUGH MOROCCO
by E. Lewis Bailey
London: Selwyn & Blount
1938

Pg. 126:  The Moor went into the kitchen and came back with the tea and
_crones de gazelles_.

Pg. 220:  This was accompanied by sticky Arab sweets and the delicious little
cakes called "gazelles' horns," which are made of pounded almonds.


INTO MOROCCO
by Pierre Loti
New York: Welch, Fracker Company
1889

Pg. Pg. 35:  It is a first welcoming fantasia,* given in our honor.
*Fantasia--an exhibition of Arab hard riding.

Pg. 180:  Immense bowls of European or Japanese ware are set either on tables
or on the ground, filled with pyramids of fruit, of walnuts removed from
their shells, of almonds, "gazelle's shoes," sweetmeats, dates,
saffron-bonbons(? My handwriting illegible--ed.).


MOROCCO THE BIZARRE,
OR, LIFE IN SUNSET LAND
by George Edmun Holt
New York: McBride, Nast & Company
1914

Pg. 131:  The attitude towards female instruction is shown in the proverb:
"Teach not your daughter letters; let her not live on the roof."

Pg. 137:  Thus, as says the Moorish proverb, "Those who are up must come
down, and those who are down must ascend; the fat shall become lean, and the
lean grow fat; the vizier of to-day is to-morrow's shepherd, and he whom we
scorn to-day, to-morrow shall order our death."



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