New Yorker; Trans-Caucasus & Choerek (1854)

[Bapopik at AOL.COM]

NEW YORKER

   New York City generates a lot of books.  Many guidebooks have new editions
for this Memorial Day to reflect the changes of September 11th.  I checked
the NYC shelf at my local Barnes & Noble bookstore.
   The revised BLUE GUIDE NEW YORK (2002) does not mention "Big Apple."
There's a box that mentions NYC as the birthplace of baseball--in the 1840s.
George Thompson's citations from the 1820s are not mentioned.  That's the
revision we've waited _ten years_ for?
   THE BIG ONION GUIDE TO NEW YORK CITY (2002) is a walking tour guide that's
inferior to the Gerard Wolfe guide about two decades ago.  "Big Onion" is not
explained with any citations.  In the Harlem section, "Big Apple" is
mentioned, with a short line that it was also used in horseracing.
   From TIME OUT NEW YORK, tenth edition 2002, pg. 3:

   In a letter dated 1756, a 24-year-old George Washington, then commander of
the colonial troops of Virginia, included the term "New York."  It's the
earliest recorded use of the words.

(My work on "New Yorker" still hasn't been mentioned in a single NYC
publication--ed.)

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

---------------------------------------------
TRAVELS IN THE TRANS-CAUCASIAN PROVINCES OF RUSSIA,
AND ALONG THE SOUTHERN SHORE OF THE LAKES VAN AND URUMIAH
IN THE AUTUMN AND WINTER OF 1837
by Captain RIchard Wilbraham
London: John Murray
1839

Pg. 45:  ...and, if I could fancy tobacco in any shape, it certainly would be
in that of the kalioun, or water-pipe.
(OED has 1835 for kalion, then 1876 for kaleon, then 1881 for kalioun--ed.)
Pg. 71:  ...kalioun (without which no one thinks of travelling in Persia).

Pg. 251:  After the quadrille was finished, some of the Georgians danced the
"Lesghian," a monotonous and ungraceful dance.
(OED has 1854 for "lesghian"--ed.)

Pg. 260:  These, together with a Turkish "bashlik," or head-piece, which (Pg.
261--ed.)  covers the cap, and fastening round the throat, protects the ears
and neck, seemed sufficient to defy the utmost rigour of the winter...
(OED has 1881 for "bashlik"--ed.)

Pg. 274:  ...Tschi...

Pg. 315:  ...with the exception of the "Kharaj,"  or poll-tax, to which all
the Christian subjects of the Porte (recheck word--ed.) are liable, I could
learn no cause of fair complaint against the Turkish government.
(OED has 1860 for "kharaj"--ed.)

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

---------------------------------------------
TRANSCAUCASIA:
SKETCHES OF THE NATIONS AND RACES BETWEEN THE BLACK SEA AND THE CASPIAN
by Baron von Haxthausen
London: Chapman and Hall
1854

Pg. 20:  The hooded cap worn by the Circassians is called _bashlik_, and by
the Abkhasians _ghetaph_.

Pg. 128:  The meal consisted of bread, goat's-milk cheese, and small slices
of mutton spitted upon large wooden skewers, and roasted over a coal fire
(_shislik_).

Pg. 231:  *Nschchar is the name of the small loaf which is eaten at the
Lord's Supper...

Pg. 244:  The meal consisted of salt-meat, pilau*,
*I have seen it remarked, that the chief meal among all the Caucasian
nations, including Turks and Persians, as well as the Slavish races, from
Illyria to Siberia, consists of the same description of food,--a porridge,
prepared of the grain which grows in each country in the greatest abundance.
In Central and Western Asia, Armenia, and Georgia, rice-porridge is eaten,
baked as pilau; among the Mingrelians and Goorians, the _gomri_ or
millet-porridge is common; the Circassians have a different sort of millet.
All the Cossacks and Poles eat their _kaschat_ or mess of buckwheat, the
Lithuanians nad Letts theirs of oat grits.  (See an essay on the Shores of
the Black Sea, in the "Minerva" journal for February, 1839.)

Pg, 245, continued:  leeks and other vegetables, and large wheaten cakes
called _tschoreki_*, baked so thin that they could be folded together like a
cloth; these in some measure serve the prupose of a napkin, when taking the
food out of the dishes, an operation which we had to perform with out
fingers.
*This kind of cake is found in most of the Caucasian countries, and the
agricultural portions of Western Asia.  A hole is dug in the earth, five or
six feet wide and deep, and bricked; in this a fire is made; and when it is
burned out, the ashes are removed, and the dough is thrown with a trowel
against the heated sides of the oven.  The hole is then covered up, and
opened again in half an hour, when the bread is baked.
(THE OXFORD COMPANION TO FOOD has "choerek, or choereg, choereq, churekg,
etc. ...  Etymological considerations suggest that the Greek name comes via
Turkey from the Caucasus, rather than the other way round."  I plugged every
name combination in the online OED, and the dish is not listed at all--ed.)

Pg. 389:  *A kind of beer is made by the Circassians from millet or
barley-meal, which when fermented is called _Fuda-kosh_, or white drink.  The
Tatars call it _Braga_.  Brandy is called _Fuda-sitza_, or black drink.