the fried eggplant and the fainting priest

[Laurence Horn]

At 8:39 PM -0500 3/24/00, Bapopik at AOL.COM wrote:
>MUSSAKA
>
>    I hadn't been aware that the OED has "moussaka" from only 1941.  Is it
>the same date online?

Yes, from a book called The Soul of Yugoslavia.  But there might just have
been a conscious decision not to import words for foreign dishes until they
reached a certain threshold of familiarity.

>    This is in my papers from THE COOK, 24 August 1885, pg. 7, col. 1:
>
>     _A TEMPTING TURKISH DISH._
>     The Turkish dish known as _Mussaka_, _Imam-Baildi_, the recipe for which
>seems to suggest something good, is according to the London _Caterer_, made
>thus: "Cut up an egg-plant (_aubergine_) into slices, salt them, strain them
>for a few minutes, dry them well in a cloth, then fry them in butter till
>they are of a rich brown colour.  Now chop up some beef very fine, and mince
>it carefully with some parsley, a suggestion of onion, pepper and salt,
>butter, and a few fresh tomatoes thinly sliced, and stew these things
>together until the meat is browned.  Next, arrange in a pie-dish or mould,
>layers of egg-plant and layers of the stew.  Pour a little broth or gravy
>into the mould, and bake in the oven for about thirty-five minutes.  Turn the
>whole carefully out on to the dish, or, better still, serve in the pie-dish.
>If there is any difficulty in procuring the egg-plants or _aubergines_, the
>ordinary vegetable-marrow is an excellent substitute."
>

What's missing here is an account of the etymology of imam bayIldI (where I
= undotted i, a back vowel due to vowel harmonic considerations).  The name
of the dish means 'the imam/priest fainted', and there are two stories on
why he did so:

1)  from pleasure because the dish was so tasty

2)  from shock when he discovered how much olive oil it took to cook it

(NOT butter, in the authentic recipe:  I've never heard of making imam
bayIldI by frying the eggplant in butter, but olive oil was probably too
exotic for the London of 1885.  Some changes really do represent progress.)

larry
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