Kebab, Tomato Soup (Travels at Oxford, 1738)

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Mon Mar 18 09:16:04 UTC 2002


A GENERAL COLLECTION OF THE BEST AND MOST INTERESTING
VOYAGES AND TRAVELS IN ALL PARTS OF THE WORLD
by John Pinkerton
London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme and Brown
1814
Volume the Fifteenth

   TRAVELS AT OXFORD (1738) by Thomas Shaw has about 20 OED cites.  So how did someone miss "kebab"??  TRAVELS has lengthy descriptions of flora and fauna that deserve an extended read.
   The author was a Professor of Greek, and Principal of Edmund Hall.
   PINKERTON is in the NYU Bobst Library, next to the Hakluyt books.

Pg. 403:
AN ACCOUNT OF WEST BARBARY.
By LANCELOT ADDISON*
*Father of the celebrated Addison.  Printed at the Theatre, Oxford, 1671.

Pg. 404:  ..mutton, beef, cabbage, raisins, potatoes, berengenas, &c. all boiled together, and extremely hot with dimicuto and garlic, which is their immutable sauce.  This hodge-podge was in imitation of the Spanish olla podrida, excepting that is wanted bacon, an ingredient indispensable to the Spanish olla, that there can be none without it, which occasioned the proverb, No sermon without St. Austin, nor olla without bacon: _Ny sermon sin Augostino, ny olla sin locino_.

Pg. 415:  They have two dishes in singular esteem, the chief whereof is cuscusou, which is made of water and flour...
Pg. 416:  The other dish is known by the name of pillow, vulgarly pronounced plaw, and it is the same with that which I said has so near a resemblance with the Spanish olla podrida.  Besides these two dishes, the Moors of a better allay make their breakfast of bonuelos, or small loaves boiled in oil, which they eat with sugar or honey.

Pg. 438:  ...ten matacales (which something exceeds our five shilling pieces)...

Pg. 438:  ...they make a gatcha, or hodge-podge of flour, water, butter, and honey...

Pg. 440:  The Moors have an herb called la halis, which, mingled with honey, they make up into balls as big as pistol bullets, and of these they swallow five or six at a time, which they find to procure appetite, further digestion, and to make frolick, amorous, and witty.

Pg. 442:
A JOURNEY TO MEQUINEZ...
By JOHN WINDHUS.*
*London, 1725.

Pg. 453:  ...a food called zummith: it is a compound of flour, honey, and spices, made into little loaves for that purpose.

Pg. 453:  ...cuscusu...

Pg. 499:
TRAVELS OF OBSERVATIONS, RELATING TO BARBARY
By THOMAS SHAW, D.D. F.R.S.
(TRAVELS AT OXFORD, 1738--ed.)

Pg. 506:  ...served up with _cuscasooe_; the rest was made _kab-ab_, i. e. cut into pieces ((Greek--ed.) is the term, Hom. Il. A. ver. 465.) and roasted, which we reserved for our breakfast or dinner the next day.

Pg. 531:  ..._mashareas_, as they call the farms of the principal inhabitants of Algiers...

Pg. 598:  ...but the sowing of barley, and the planting of lentils and garvancos, as they call the cicer or chich pea...

Pg. 599:  ...a white sort of millet, called Drah*, which they prefer to barley, in fattening their cattle.
*The Draba Arabum of the botanists, though quite a different plant, comes from this, the former being a species of Thlaspi, with which millet has no matter of affinity.

Pg. 600:  After the grain is winnowed, they lodge it in _mattamores_, or subterraneous magazines...
(OED has 1695, then skips right over this to 1849--ed.)

Pg. 601:  Endive, cress, chervil, spinage, all sorts of beets, with the young shoots of the wild and garden artichoke, are in season from October to June; and then follow, during the rest of the summer, calabashas, mellow-keahs*, bedinjanns, and tomatas; each of them in its turn gives a relish to their soups and ragouts.
(Tomato soup?  Isn't the tomato poisonous?--ed.)



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