Jambalaya (1875); Chocolate Kisses (1874)

[Laurence Horn]

At 6:36 AM -0500 2/13/02, Bapopik at AOL.COM wrote:
>
>    From THE CULTIVATOR & COUNTRY GENTLEMAN, 22 July 1875, pg. 455, col. 2:
>
>    _Jombalyeeyah._--The Orleanian gives the following receipt for
>this favorite Louisiana Creole dish:
>    It is composed first, of rice; then large red (Col. 3--ed.)
>beans; then rice again; then smoked sausages; then more rice; then
>ham; then red peppers; rice again; then chicken; more rice; then
>oysters; condiments _a discretion_; boil all together.  You'll be
>happy.
>    The New-Orleans Cooperative News makes the dish as follows:
>    A half gallon of washed rice is put into a large camp kettle, and
>with sufficient water set to boiling.  After a while slices of fat
>pickled pork are put in; at intervals, half fried pieces of bear
>meat, venison and ham are dropped in and well stirred; then a
>loggerhead turtle, and by and by three owls, two wild ducks, a half
>dozen squirrels, and five or six small cat fish with broken biscuit,
>are put in, with an abundance of garlic onions, red and black
>pepper, salt and leaves of sweet bay, for a high seasoning; the
>whole thoroughly cooked and eaten cold.
>
Eaten cold?  I love all the variations on the recipes and spellings,
but "eaten cold" is something I wouldn't have guessed.  Leftovers,
maybe, but would those Cajuns really have waited until all that
scrumptious half-fried bear meat, owls, turtles, squirrels and all
have cooled down before digging in?  Cold bear meat sounds even worse
than cold pizza.

I'm wondering about the etymology, which gets tracked back to
Provençal JAMBALAIA and then dumped.  Does anyone happen to know if
it's basically the word for 'ham' with a suffix or two?  One web
source claims it's from French (not Provençal) "jambon" plus, and I
quote, "'ya', West African for 'rice'", but I'm skeptical, not only
because JAMBONYA > JAMBALAYA isn't a particularly well-attested sound
change or because West African isn't a language.

My dream of a Lexicographie Gastronomique Mondiale is for Barry to
provide the first cites and for all of us to chip in with the
etymologies.  (By the time it comes online, the technology will allow
us to download free samples of the dishes as we check the entries.)

larry