Microgadus tomcod, a close relation of the COD but much smaller (maximum length 40 cm/15″) and found only in the NW Atlantic, from Labrador down to Virginia. It may be distinguished from codling (young cod) by the long filaments of the ventral fins and the more rounded tail fin. Colour varies, but is usually olive-brown above with green or yellow tinges and darker mottling.
The tomcod frequents coastal waters and estuaries. An unusual winter fishery for it, through holes cut in the ice, has traditionally been carried out in the St Lawrence River. Brightly painted fishing cabins are erected on the ice and furnished with heating for the fishermen as they work their holes.
This fish can be fried, poached, or baked. In some places, including New York, it has been treated as a delicacy.
(or, less often, tome) a French word which means cheese and forms part of the name of certain French cheeses, especially in the Savoie. The best known is tomme de Savoie, but there are numerous others. Almost all are made from skimmed cow’s milk, but tomme de Beaumont is made from whole cow’s milk, and there is also tomme de chèvre, made from goat’s milk.
The variety of tommes is such that it is difficult to generalize about them. But they typically have a grey, mouldy rind; a soft, pale interior; and a mild tang. Tomme au marc is an exception. It is coated with marc (grape pips and skins left over from wine-making) and has a strong taste and aroma. Some other tommes benefit from added flavours: brandy, or the spirit made from marc, or fennel, etc.
The Italian term toma and its diminutive tomino are evidently related to the French term although the cheeses they denote are not quite the same.
possessed by most vertebrate animals, a fleshy muscular movable organ of the floor of the mouth which bears sensory taste buds and has special functions in tasting and swallowing food.
Tongues from the larger animals have ‘roots’ which are normally trimmed off, with other unwanted matter, before sale; and they have thick skins, which can be removed easily after parboiling. They may also be smoked, for example beef tongues in the Jura region of France.
Tongues in general need prolonged moist cooking, which often takes the form of braising, to make them tender, and may be eaten either hot or cold. In Britain cooked tongues, canned, are a popular item for eating cold with salad or in sandwiches. In France, hot cooked tongue is more commonly met, and characteristic dishes are: Langue de veau, sauce piquante (calf’s tongue is considered the best); and Langue de bœuf à l’aigre-douce (or sauce Madère). Langues à l’écarlate are tongues salted, trimmed, enclosed in a sort of sausage casing, cooked, coloured red, and used as an item of CHARCUTERIE. In the context of French cuisine, it is no doubt unnecessary to explain that langues de chat are not what they might seem, but biscuits (see BISCUIT VARIETIES); but some explanation is needed for the antique title Langue d’ésope; this dish consists of sheep’s tongues rearing up around a pyramid of chestnut purée, with whole chestnuts on top, and is mentioned here because chestnuts are generally regarded as one of the ingredients which go well with tongue.
Ox, calf, lamb, and pigs’ tongues are all commonly eaten in Europe; whereas in N. American markets ox tongues only, and those rarely, are available.
The tongues of deer make a good dish; and REINDEER tongue, often smoked, is a delicacy in some northern countries. Hunters will eat bears’ tongues. Rabbits’ tongues, cooked, have been served in France as an hors d’œuvre or as a garnish for meat dishes. Proceeding even further down the scale of size, one finds that in Roman times the tongues of songbirds were regarded as a great delicacy. Ducks’ tongues are a commonplace in Chinese cuisine and elsewhere in SE Asia.
In the world of seafood, various fish, such as cod, have tongues which are eaten with enthusiasm.
not a clam, not even a mollusc, is a creature which mimics a clamlike bivalve in appearance but is really a brachiopod. The genus Lingula, to which the tongue clam belongs, is of extreme antiquity, indeed according to some authorities the oldest living genus of animals, having survived unchanged for 500 million years or more.
The greenish shell has a maximum length of 45 cm (18″), but with the long stalk (peduncle) extended the creature may be almost twice that length. It lives in a vertical burrow, with just three little holes or a tiny slit in the sand showing where it lurks.
Tongue clams are exploited locally in various parts of SE Asia. The stalks are boiled or steamed; or they may be pickled in vinegar.
is a non-alcoholic drink based on sweetened, carbonated water flavoured with quinine. It is now probably best loved as one partner in the drink gin and tonic, a mixture considered by many to epitomize the British Raj; however, the combination does not appear to have been popular until well into the 20th century, when it joined a well-established range of other drinks based on gin and bitters.
Artificially carbonated water has been known since the mid-18th century, when a method for making it was invented by Dr Joseph Priestley. In the 1790s, a Mr Jacob Schweppe (amongst others) set up a small factory in London to produce sparkling waters. Many of these included blends of mineral salts, in imitation of naturally occurring spring waters, considered to have qualities beneficial to health. Quinine, as well as being used as a prophylactic against malaria, was also considered to be an appetite stimulant and a more general antidote to fever. Bayley (1994) comments that Schweppes added ‘Indian’ Tonic Water to their range in the 1870s as a commercialization of an already well-established Raj practice of adding anti-malarial quinine to soda water. This remains the best-known brand of tonic water, although a ‘Quinine Tonic Water’ had been patented in 1858 by one Mr Erasmus Bond.
Laura Mason
the fruit of a leguminous tree, Dipteryx odorata, native to the forests of Colombia, Venezuela, Guiana, and Brazil. The beans are mainly gathered from the wild in Venezuela, but there has also been some cultivation. The value of the beans has been due to their containing coumarin, which has an aroma between those of hay and of VANILLA.
The dried beans (one to each pod) are cured in rum and then dried again, when they become coated with a white deposit of coumarin. Until shortly after the Second World War they were in considerable demand as a source of flavour for liqueurs, confectionery, and chocolate. However, the use of natural coumarin in food was banned in the USA in 1954, and the use of tonka beans restricted to perfume. In other countries they have now been largely replaced by synthetic coumarin and vanilla.
also called teeth fungi, include several highly edible species. Many have ‘teeth’ which are long, like spines, and hang downwards. So their common names reflect their resemblance to hedgehogs, waterfalls, beards, or the shaggy heads of bears or monkeys. It is the pendent teeth which are edible. Others such as the hedgehog fungus have small teeth which are only visible when one looks under the cap.
The genus Hericium, whose members grow on deciduous trees and their stumps or logs, supplies some of the best. H. coralloides and H. erinaceum, which occur in many parts of the world including Europe and N. America, are of picturesque appearance, giving rise to names such as bear’s head, coral, or waterfall in N. America.
H. coralloides is a white growth, up to 30 cm (12″) across, which can be of startling beauty. Marteka (1980) records that:
In 1806, Elias Fries, a renowned Swedish botanist who helped lay the groundwork for mycology by setting up a classification system for fungi, decided to devote his life to the study of fungi after spotting a coral hydnum while blueberrying with his mother as a child. Even when he wrote his autobiography Historiola Studii Mei Mycologici fifty years later, Fries still vividly remembered the emotion that seized him when he found an unusually large specimen of the coral hydnum.
Marteka also quotes Krieger (1947) as saying that ‘its pure whiteness seen in contrast with the dark colors of some fallen, moss-covered monarch of the forest, will cause even the most callous to stop in wonder and admiration. It seems almost sacrilegious to recommend it as food for the camper who wishes to vary his diet with a taste of mushrooms.’ However, other writers affirm that young specimens, firm and white, are so delectable that the sacrilege is justified.
H. erinaceum, satyr’s beard in N. America, has much longer spines which do look like a beard. It is the famous monkey’s head mushroom of China, where it is both gathered wild (found, typically on the trunks of an oak, Quercus mongolica) and cultivated on a modest scale. Both these species make good eating when young and fresh, but need to be carefully cleaned, blanched, and cooked long and gently.
The same applies to H. clathroides (formerly ramosum), a more compact growth with short spines which grow along the length of the branches rather than being clustered at the tips. Like the other two, this has a global distribution.
Hedgehog fungus, Hydnum (formerly Dentinum) repandum, is common in woods in Europe and N. America and China, in the autumn. Its cap, which is usually of a creamy colour and a suedelike texture, bends up at the edges (the meaning of repandum). The thick stem is often off centre. The area between it and the cap is covered with spines, whence two alternative names, rubber brush fungus and pig’s trotter fungus.
The species Sarcodon imbricatum is not unlike Hydnum repandum, but can grow to a larger size (up to 25 cm/nearly 10″ across the cap) and has large dark scales on its cap.
(or lerén or sweet corn-root) common names for Calathea allouia, a close relation in the family Marantaceae of the W. Indian ARROWROOT plant. The boiled tubers, like small ovoid potatoes in appearance, have a crisp and unusual texture (provided that care is taken not to overcook them, when they would quickly turn to mush). They have some similarity to the JERUSALEM ARTICHOKE (or topinambour, a name with which topitambo is confused or for which it is substituted in some places); but the plants are not closely related.
The flower clusters are also cooked and eaten, and the leaves, used as a wrapping, give an agreeable additional flavour to tamales and other foods.
a group of single shells so called because in shape they resemble spinning tops. Trochus niloticus maximus, a large SE Asian species, is familiar because its large shells (30 cm/1′) are used for ornamental purposes. They are black and white, but successive polishings produce a reddish hue and then a pearly finish. In Burma the shells are thought to resemble a kind of pagoda dome, so the last part of the Burmese name, kha-yu-zedi, means shrine.
Top-shells are boiled to permit extraction of the meat, which can then be fried or used in curries or soups. It can also be dried, and a product described as ‘canned top-shell’ is exported from China.
The top-shell of the Mediterranean, Monodonta turbinata, is much smaller: a mere 3 cm (just over 1″). It too is edible, and is usually eaten without further ado after being boiled for a while in sea or salted water with aromatics such as thyme. The small creatures are prized in various places, including the island of Murano near Venice where they are known as bodoletti.
Torte is a German word which corresponds fairly closely to GATEAU. Its sister-word, Kuchen, can usually be translated as CAKE (large or of biscuit size); but in this connection see also QUICHE, a derived term. Torte appears in the title of many celebrated C. European confections, including SACHERTORTE. A few other examples are:
Although Kuchen often refers to something less fancy than a Torte, one of the most famous Kuchen is very fancy indeed. This is the Baumkuchen (tree cake), which may be seen in the windows of specialist bakeries in Vienna and Berlin. Sarah Kelly (1985) has described it thus:
A metre or more in height … Baumkuchen is so called because of the concentric rings, like those of an ageing tree, which appear on a cross-section of the cake, and because of its tree-like shape, characterized by indentations which resemble the shaft of a screw. Unlike most cakes, Baumkuchen is grilled, not baked, on a rotating rod which turns horizontally in front of a red-hot grill plate. Each time a coating caramelizes, the baker applies a new layer of rich mixture—the process which produces the concentric rings. When the mixture runs out, he presses a long wooden ‘comb’ into the soft ‘tree’, giving it the characteristic indentations, before glazing it first with apricot and then with a clear or chocolate icing.
Baumkuchen is of particular interest because of its history. Barbara Maher (1982) traces its evolution in Germany from 15th-century monastery kitchens through the famous cookery book of Rumpolt (1581) to modern forms and to a remarkable eulogy by the German writer Theodor Fontane. She also notes that Dorothy Hartley (1954) had found an English manuscript recipe from the 14th century which provided what was essentially the same thing.
Streuselkuchen (crumble cake) can be a plain rubbed-in cake (see CAKE-MAKING) with a cinnamon-flavoured CRUMBLE topping. A more elaborate version, called Apfelstreuselkuchen, has a layer of apple (or other fruit) purée between two layers of crumble.
a round, thin unleavened bread made from ground MAIZE, a basic food of Mesoamerica. It is not known for how many millennia this has been a staple; but when the conquistadores arrived in the New World in the late 15th century, they discovered that the inhabitants made flat corn breads. The native Nahuatl name for these was tlaxcalli and the Spanish gave them the name tortilla.
Making the basic tortilla is simple, at least in theory. First a dough is made. To do this, the maize kernels are parched and cooked briefly in a mixture of unslaked lime and water. This step (see NIXTAMALIZATION) loosens the husks, increases the nutritional content of the grain, and ensures that a flexible flat bread can be made. Then the corn is ground into a dough called masa in Mexico (a commercial product called masa harina, a flour made from the prepared kernels, can be mixed with water to make tortillas when corn is unavailable). The dough is shaped between the hands, or patted out on a flat surface, or stamped out with a special press. The tortillas are then cooked on a hot, ungreased GRIDDLE. They should be speckled with brown, and puff up when turned, but remain soft and pliable—rather like an Indian CHAPATI.
The art of tortilla-making was highly developed by the native Mesoamericans; one 17th-century Spanish observer, Francisco Hernández, remarked on the fine, almost transparent tortillas prepared for important people. The province of Oaxaca is known for the thinnest; those made in Guadalajara are thick, and the startling colour of blue corn is carefully preserved in tortillas made in the mountains of C. Mexico. Wheat flour, introduced by the Spanish, is used in the north of the country.
Fresh tortillas are eaten as bread, used as plate and spoon, or filled to make composite dishes such as tacos and enchiladas. These are described in their basic forms below, but their fillings may involve selections made from items such as shredded cooked meat, frijoles refritos (REFRIED BEANS), fish, scrambled eggs, or crumbled chorizo (see SAUSAGES OF SPAIN); cheese or sour cream; guacamole (avocado purée), shredded lettuce, sliced onion, other vegetables; and a salsa (sauce). This last item comes in two main fresh versions (each with many variations): salsa roja, onions, garlic, serrano CHILLIES all toasted on a griddle and then ground together with salt and herbs; and salsa verde, Mexican ‘tomates’ (green tomatoes) plus the same ingredients treated in the same way. Herbs used could be coriander or oregano.
A taco, in Mexico, is a fresh tortilla rolled around mashed beans, shredded meat, and sauce. It can be lightly fried after filling, and is eaten as a snack or an appetiser. In the TEX-MEX cuisine of the USA, a taco denotes a tortilla bent in half, deep fried to give a U shape, and filled with minced beef, shredded lettuce, and grated cheese.
An enchilada is also a tortilla rolled around a filling of meat, vegetables, or cheese; it differs from a taco in that the tortilla is fried and dipped in a piquant tomato sauce before the filling is added. Alternatively, the tortillas can be dipped in sauce and then fried. This is a main course for a main meal.
A quesadilla is a ‘turnover’ made by folding a fresh tortilla in half around a simple filling such as cheese, epazote (a pungent herb), and pepper, or potatoes and chorizo, and deep-frying it. This is just a snack.
Stale but not dried-out tortillas can be converted into tostadas by frying them and serving with some kind of topping—melted cheese, guacamole, fried beans, or shredded meat and salad. Or they are cut into wedges and fried until crisp to make totopos or tostaditas. Nachos are corn chips spread with cheese and Jalapeño peppers. Mexicans also cut dry tortillas into squares, fry them, and use in place of croutons in soup; or cut them into strips and make concoctions reminiscent of pasta dishes.
Tortilla dough is often used to make small snack items, collectively known as antojitos (little whims). These range from simple fried dough chips flavoured with chillies or cheese, to little balls filled with fried beans, and chalupas, little boat shapes with fillings (although in the north of Mexico, a chalupa is a tostada). The range is vast. Cooking may be on the griddle or by frying.
Laura Mason
the common name for terrestrial species of reptiles in the order Chelonia; but see also TURTLE, since the usage of the names tends to overlap.
Tortoises are eaten less than turtles are, but are nonetheless consumed locally, and on a small scale, in many parts of the world.
So far as preparation and cookery are concerned, tortoises are much the same as turtles.
has to be defined in part by negatives. The name is given to any cheese of the PORT SALUT type which is not pretending to be real Port du Salut, or is not another named variety such as Saint-Paulin. The original Port du Salut was invented by Trappist monks, and many copies are also made by Trappists in other monasteries; but there are plenty of laymen making Trappist cheese all over Germany, Austria, and E. Europe. The first use of the name was in 1885, in a monastery near Banjaluka in Bosnia.
Without travel, culinary history would have been very different. From the start, cuisines have been shaped as much by travel as by the local environment. By about 10,000 years ago, humans had colonized all the earth’s habitable lands except the Pacific islands, an accomplishment possible only because of successful prospecting for potentially edible plants and animals and ingenious ways of cooking them so that they were less poisonous and more digestible.
In historic times, the interchange of raw materials, techniques for processing, and ideas for finished dishes increased. One or two influential travellers—often missionaries, merchants, or military men—could and did change entire cuisines. They took with them seeds and slips of plants, dietary texts, processing experts, and cooks. With the help of their patrons—kings and emperors—the cuisines of influential regions such as N. China, N. India, the Middle East, and the Mediterranean came to extend across entire empires, indeed by the 16th century across much of the globe including the Americas.
Important as travel was for shaping food habits, travellers had to brace themselves for bleak eating as they moved around. Travel was an expensive, uncomfortable, and often dangerous undertaking. From very early, almost every society had dehydrated travelling foods, such as the Middle Eastern family of dishes with names that were cognates of KASHK (mixtures of dried milk, yoghurt, and barley), Mesoamerican maize toasted and ground to a powder (PINOLE), Chinese dried salted fruits. Over the centuries, institutions that catered to travellers gradually multiplied: monasteries, private houses (for the rich), taverns (usually for short-distance travel), rest houses (in the European colonies), boarding houses (in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries), railway HOTELS. But since it was unusual for them to have repeat business, the proprietors had little reason to produce good food.
Moreover dietary theory in most parts of the world was clear that home food was best. Eating food produced in a different climate and soil was deleterious to health. Religious customs and political preference further predisposed travellers to suspect foreign foods. The rare exceptions seem to have been places such as 11th-century China where it was fashionable to go to regional RESTAURANTS in big cities such as Hangchow.
This changed in the 19th century. The European rich began taking long train or steamship journeys to scenic areas, spurring the growth of the hotel industry, including the hotel restaurant. International cuisine (essentially a version of French HAUTE CUISINE) was served in the hotels from the Côte d’Azur to the Canadian Rockies to Tokyo, on P&O liners and the Orient Express.
Meanwhile culinary tourism to experience regional food was developing in France. Several factors contributed: the Third Republic’s determination to bring the provinces into the French mainstream; the automobile, which made it possible for the rich to motor out of Paris to visit cathedrals and castles, after which they were hungry for refreshment; and the Michelin company’s inspired introduction of touring guides and starring systems for restaurants. Restaurants that featured provincial dishes—the dishes of the bourgeoisie tweaked to Parisian taste and priced at Parisian prices—sprang up along the main roads. By contrast, guides such as Duncan Hines in the United States were chiefly concerned to reassure readers that restaurants were clean and that they served familiar food.
After the Second World War, with the democratization of the automobile and (later) of airfares, travel increased. The Hilton Hotels that opened worldwide saw part of their mission as being the generation of international friendship. In Cairo and in Istanbul they researched the local cuisine and served versions of it in their dining rooms, alongside international cuisine.
By the 1970s and 1980s, the end of European and American colonialism meant that migrants from former colonies began opening so-called ethnic restaurants in the cities of the West. Diners began to get the idea that you might travel to experience food. The earlier idea that this was dangerous was now scorned. Culinary tourism associations were founded. Governments of newly independent nations decided that national cuisines were as essential as flags, anthems, and stamps. Besides, they brought in more money. Culinary schools opened in places such as Goa, Szechwan, and Indonesia. Entrepreneurs adapted and invented foods for tourists such as luaus, CURRIES, and rijsttafels (see INDONESIA).
Rachel Laudan
for which a detailed recipe was given by Richard Bradley (1736), who acknowledged it to a certain Mr Rozelli of The Hague, was a bottle or jar of concentrated sauce which travellers could take with them on journeys. The ingredients were variable, according to individual tastes, but the general procedure was to infuse a number of flavouring elements such as nutmeg, ginger, dried orange peel, shallots, and other herbs and spices in a suitable liquid (red wine, vinegar, VERJUICE). The product, in a well-stoppered container, could keep for up to a year if vinegar or wine had been used, but only three months with verjuice. Bradley assures us that it ‘is a good Companion for Travellers, who more frequently find good Meat than good Cooks’.
This product occurs less often in recipe books of the 18th century than do recipes for another ‘travellers’ aid’, namely PORTABLE SOUP. Since the sauce had to be carried in a bottle or jar, it was less convenient than the small dry cubes of ‘veal glue’ which constituted portable soup.
a term which in Britain may be correctly applied to various SUGAR syrups including GOLDEN SYRUP obtained during the process of sugar-refining, ranging in colour from just about black to pale golden, is in practice used mainly of the darker syrups, brown or black, which are called molasses elsewhere.
Treacle TART is a favourite dessert in England. Treacle, of the dark sort, also appears in THUNDER AND LIGHTNING.
the name given to leguminous plants—shrubs, trees, and climbers—of the genus Bauhinia. These grow widely in Africa, India, and SE Asia, and there is also more than one Australian species.
All the bauhinias have two-lobed butterfly leaves. These are commemorated by the generic name, which honours a pair of botanists, John and Caspar Bauhin. The bauhinias mostly lurk just inside the threshold of edibility. None is very good, but many have sufficient local importance to justify a mention.
The seeds of Bauhinia reticulata are eaten in tropical Africa, and the pods of B. esculenta are widely consumed, especially in S. Africa, where it is known as camel’s foot (a name possibly imported from India, where it applies to B. purpurea).
The Malabar tree bean, B. malabarica, bears pods which are used as a flavouring in Thailand and Java and elsewhere in SE Asia. The leaves and pods of the ‘Buddhist tree bean’ (a name sometimes used, apparently because this species occurs often in Buddhist sculptures), B. variegata, are also eaten in India and its flowers pickled.
In Australia, at least one species has been used by the Aboriginals, who obtained sweet substances from the flowers or by making cuts in the bark. ‘After rain they visit the scored trees and gather the minni, a thick sweet sap which exudes from the cuts like jellied honey-coloured gum; a great delicacy among the blacks, who eat it straight from the tree.’ This is from an early 20th-century settler, quoted by Low (1989).
Gossypium arboreum, a bushy treelike cotton plant, indigenous to Asia, which bears yellow or red flowers. When dried, these are dark brown and are used in Thailand in dishes such as Gaeng kae, a vegetable soup made with coconut milk.
The seeds of this plant yield an edible oil, but the main source of COTTONSEED OIL is G. herbaceum.
(or proliferous/top/Egyptian onion), either a variety (var proliferum) of Allium cepa or (as in Cornucopia) A. cepa × proliferum. Perversely, the best-known strain is called the Egyptian onion. This plant, which is a hardy perennial, spreads itself in an odd way. The flowering top of the plant, which may reach a height of 1.2 m (4′) or more, develops into a cluster of bulbils (miniature bulbs); and above these may develop a ‘second storey’ of more bulbils. As they grow, their increasing weight and the withering of the stem causes the cluster to keel over and plant itself at some distance from the parent plant. The underground bulbs also divide like those of aggregate onions. Both top bulbs, picked before they fall, and the underground ones are eaten. They are hot and strong. The little round top bulbs make good pickled onions.
or tamarillo, Cyphomandra betacea, a fruit which resembles the tomato, but grows in bushes at high altitudes in tropical and subtropical zones. The plant was first cultivated by Peruvian Indians, but is now found elsewhere, e.g. India, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, New Zealand, and California.
The fruits, 5–6 cm (2″) long, with a smooth reddish-yellow skin, are borne in clusters of three or more. The succulent red or yellow pulp surrounds black seeds. The flavour is rich and sweet, allayed by some acidity. The fruits are eaten fresh; or stewed; or made into jam, preserves, or pickles, in much the same way as tomatoes. In Réunion, for example, they take the place of tomatoes for many purposes when the latter are out of season.
What has become the accepted commercial name, tamarillo, was adopted in New Zealand around 1970.
a name applied in an indiscriminate manner to various fish of the carangid family (see JACK). It sounds like a Cornish name, which would suggest that Cornish emigrants to the New World, and especially to Australasia, are responsible for its use; but it is thought by the NSOED to be a version of cavally, which in turn is probably derived from the Italian cavalli, plural of the Italian name for HORSE MACKEREL. The horse mackerel, another member of the same family, used to be taken in very large quantities in Cornwall.
The more important of the species to which the name has been applied include:
a traditional English sweet or dessert. The essential ingredients are SPONGE CAKE soaked in sherry or white wine, rich CUSTARD, fruit or jam, and whipped cream, layered in a glass dish in that order. The cream is often decorated with, for example, slivers of almond, glacé cherries, ANGELICA. The trifle is essentially a popular dish, i.e. a dish of the people, more apt to be present at family celebrations and children’s parties than in cookery books or on restaurant menus.
The word trifle derives from the Middle English ‘trufle’ which in turn came from the Old French trufe (or trufle), meaning something of little importance.
Originally, in the late 16th century, the culinary meaning of the word trifle was ‘a dish composed of cream boiled with various ingredients’. This is also the description one could give of a FOOL. Indeed Florio, in his dictionary of 1598, bracketed the two terms when he wrote: ‘a kinde of clouted cream called a foole or a trifle.’
The first known recipe entitled trifle was in The Good Huswife’s Iewell [i.e. Jewel] (1596) by T. Dawson, and there were many such recipes in the 17th century, including a ‘Triffel’ from the great cookery writer Robert May (1685), but these were little more than spiced and sweetened cream, latterly thickened by renneting.
It was not until the mid-18th century that something like the modern trifle began to emerge. Biscuits wetted with wine were then in place at the bottom of the bowl, and custard was on top of them, while the topmost layer could be achieved by pouring whipped SYLLABUB froth over all. When this froth was replaced by plain whipped cream, the process of evolution was virtually complete.
The first two published recipes for trifle in the modern sense both came out in 1751: one in the 4th edition of Hannah Glasse’s The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy; the other in the 1751 edition of The Lady’s Companion (see under Anon, The Whole Duty of a Woman).
Helen Saberi (1995b) gave the first historical account to cover the evolution of the trifle up to this point; what happened to it thereafter, both in Britain and on emigration to the USA and elsewhere; and its relationship to things like TIPSY CAKE, whim-wham, and the Italian ZUPPA INGLESE. This account was considerably amplified by Helen Saberi and Alan Davidson (2001).
the common name for a larger number of species in the family Balistidae, notably Balistes capriscus. They may also be called leatherjackets, in allusion to their thick and tough skins. The ‘trigger’ in the main name is a little spine on the back, just behind the solitary dorsal spine (and in fact representing a rudimentary second dorsal spine). This ‘trigger’ can be used to lock the dorsal spine in an upright position.
Some trigger fish may reach a length of 60 cm (24″), but they are mostly smaller. Nonetheless, as they are deep bodied, they have enough flesh to be worth eating, and it is good. They are often divested of their leathery skins before being sold.
Among the species brought to market are:
generally defined as the stomach of ruminants (even-toed, hoofed animals with a three- or four-chambered stomach such as the cow, ox, sheep, deer, etc.). Tripe from cow/ox/calf is much the most common. There are four types:
For a use of the milk-filled abomasum of a calf, see SONOFABITCH STEW.
The term reed tripe may be used of the third or fourth types. The French name gras-double may be applied to any of the first three types.
All tripe from the butcher is very white, as a result of lengthy and tedious processing (soaking in lime, then in brine and boiling). In the north of England, and no doubt elsewhere, being a tripe dresser was a specialized calling.
Tripe generally needs many hours of cooking even after it has been prepared. In Normandy a beautiful honey-golden utensil called a tripière is used for cooking it. This is circular, wide, and shallow, with a small removable lid.
Well-known tripe dishes include Tripes à la mode de Caen (Normandy); American PEPPER POT soup; Tripe and onions (north of England); Busecca (tripe soup, Lombardy); Tripas à moda do Porto (Oporto in Portugal).
However, pride of place should perhaps be given to Işkembe çorbası, Turkish tripe soup, in the light of the information provided by Nevin Halıcı (1989):
In Turkey tripe soup is usually drunk late in the evening. In large towns there are tripe restaurants—işkembeci—which remain open all night. People who have been out drinking make a final call at the tripe house before returning home. During the Kurban Bayramı, the religious feast of sacrifice, tripe soup is made without fail in every home where the ritual of sacrifice has been observed.
Lobotes surinamensis, a fish which does not really have three tails, but whose extended dorsal and anal fins give this impression. It bears a general resemblance to SEA BASS, is brassy-brown in colour with blotches, and may grow to a length of 1 m (39″). Its extensive range includes the W. Atlantic (Virginia to Argentina, including the Caribbean, whence surinamensis in its name), the E. Atlantic (the Strait of Gibraltar to southern Africa), the W. Mediterranean (rarely), and many of the tropical or warm seas of the Indo-Pacific, including parts of Australia.
Wheeler (1979) remarks that young tripletails are quite common. ‘They are found in shallow water inshore, where they have been known to mimic floating mangrove leaves, drifting at the surface in a gently curved posture with the head slightly lower than the tail. They are also frequently found in floating sargassum weed, which suggests that they are common offshore.’ Adults are less common and have the reputation of being sluggish; indeed one of the Thai names for this species means ‘sluggish snapper’. However, if trapped in a net, they may manage to make a big jump, accounting for the name ‘jumping cod’ given to them in parts of Australia.
This is a fish of good quality, to which all standard preparations may be applied. Small specimens can be grilled whole.
of the genus X. Triticosecale, a new kind of cereal grain created by man. Its development began in 1876 when a Scottish botanist, A. Stephen Wilson, first managed to produce seedlings of an artificial cross between WHEAT and RYE. The name ‘triticale’ is a combination of the botanical generic names of wheat (Triticum) and rye (Secale).
Such crosses occasionally occur naturally in the field, but the resulting hybrids are always sterile. Nevertheless, the prospect was attractive: a cereal with the superior bread-making properties of wheat and the hardiness of rye. Wilson’s plants were also sterile; but in 1891 a German, Rimpau, managed to produce partly fertile side shoots on an otherwise sterile plant. It was not until the 1930s that further progress was made. By this time more was known about genetics, in particular concerning the experimental doubling of chromosome numbers in plants, which could be done by treating them with the chemical colchicine.
Briefly, a normal plant is a diploid: it contains two half sets of chromosomes (genetic material): half of each of its parents’ chromosomes. Tetraploids, inheriting a full complement of chromosomes from each parent, and thus having double the normal allowance, occur in nature or can be induced. There are higher levels of ‘ploidy’: hexaploidy (three full sets), and octoploidy (four). All these polyploid plants have a tendency to grow to a large size: most cultivated wheats are hexaploids or tetraploids with seed heads far larger than their wild diploid ancestors. Furthermore, polyploidy is a way of overcoming the incompatibility of two insufficiently closely related plants whose chromosomes do not match each other, although it does not automatically result in a successful crossing with fertile offspring, as the early triticale breeding attempts showed.
By 1939, after seven years’ work with repeated crossing of hexaploids and octoploids, a German scientist, Müntzing, was getting promising results, and by 1950 he had produced plants with 90% of the yield of wheat. From 1954 Shebeski and Jenkins at the University of Manitoba in Canada began intensive breeding. It became clear that the new grain was nutritionally as good as wheat and barley, and that it was possible to make bread with it. In 1970 the first commercial variety, Rosner, went on sale. Meanwhile, the International Centre for the Improvement of Maize and Wheat, in Mexico, produced new lines called Armadillo, which, when combined with Canadian strains, began to produce superior plants.
The latest kinds of triticale have good hardiness, very large seed heads, and are nutritionally better than wheat, having a higher content of lysine, an amino acid, in which wheat and other cereals are rather low. Triticale is a little weaker than wheat in GLUTEN (the substance which gives wheat bread its firm texture), but with slightly altered preparation methods it is possible to make triticale bread of satisfactory texture. The flavour is stronger than that of wheat, not particularly like that of rye, but with a characteristic ‘nutty’ quality. Triticale bread, flour, and breakfast cereals have been made available so that consumers can try the new grain.
a group of fish in the genus Salmo, which is where SALMON also belong. Because trout are a favourite of anglers and are food fishes of high value, they have been introduced from one continent to another on a large scale, and have also become a major subject of fish farming. Trout of one kind or another are now found in every continent except Antarctica, and some confusion over nomenclature has resulted. The three species of true trout, with their common names in English, regions of origin, present distribution, and maximum lengths, are listed below. So are two related fish to which the name trout applies, albeit less correctly.
Long usage has legitimized the use of the name trout for two of the fish in the genus Salvelinus, whose members are more correctly known as CHAR:
Cookery of trout is not a problem. Poaching or grilling (US broiling) are common techniques, as is cooking en papillote (in an aluminium foil package with flavourings and a little butter or olive oil), and frying (as in Truite aux amandes). Truite au bleu is a special technique for trout; see AU BLEU.
a fungus whose fruiting body grows underground and which constitutes a mysterious, costly, and delicate foodstuff.
One wonders whether President Truman ever received, and tasted, the largest truffle of which a record exists: a giant which registered over 2 kg (4 lb) on the scales. The Italian who dug it up in 1951 near Alba, in the heart of the Italian truffle country, sold it for 130,000 lire (equivalent, perhaps, to more than £3,000 now) and Goldschmied (1954) records that the businessman from Rome who bought it intended to offer it in homage to Truman. If he did, there would have been a pleasing contrast between gift and recipient; the simple eater from Missouri faced by a supreme example of the most expensive, subtle, and mysterious of the foods known to man. The Roman donor could also have reflected that he was giving to the leading personality of the New World the one Old World food which he could not possibly, at that time, grow on his own territory.
It is true that some species of truffle exist in N. America, including Tuber texense, an edible white truffle used by some restaurateurs. But no one has claimed that this, or any other truffle outside Europe, is a serious rival to the black truffle of Périgord, T. melanosporum, or the white truffle of Alba, T. magnatum.
The black truffle is probably at its best in Périgord, where conditions conspire to bring it to perfection, but it does grow in other parts of France, and also in Spain and Italy. The white truffle of Italy is found in a number of localities but mainly in the vicinity of Alba in Piedmont where the principal market is held. These two species stand alone, in excellence as in fame.
It was not always so. A Roman living 1,800 years ago who wished to honour his own emperor might well have offered him a specimen of the desert truffle which was brought to Rome from Arab lands, especially N. Africa. There are three genera, Tirmania, Terfezia, and Tuber, all known as terfez by the Arabs (faqqa in the Gulf States), still found and prized as a seasonal delicacy, especially after winter rains, in the region of Kuwait and the Persian Gulf, and in the spring and early summer in Morocco. Tirmania and Terfezia truffles have a light flavour and are eaten as a vegetable, usually cleaned, sliced, and fried. Since they are dug up from the sand, they tend to be difficult to clean completely. The genus Tuber is more akin to the European truffle. Annual production used to be approximately 1,000 tonnes in Morocco but has lately dwindled owing to drought.
In ancient times, and indeed until about 100 years ago, no natural historian understood what truffles are and how they grow. THEOPHRASTUS thought that they (and other fungi) were produced by the rain of thunderstorms; Dioscorides that they were a kind of root; Pliny that they were ‘callosities of earth’; and Plutarch that lightning was a necessary condition of their formation. Even in the 18th and 19th centuries, when some learned men were beginning to see the truth, others continued to uphold quite false theories.
In reality, a truffle is the fruiting body of a fungus which grows wholly underground. Truffles are not the only underground ‘mushrooms’, but they are the only valuable ones of this habit. The plant itself consists of an extensive web of filaments so fine as to be invisible. And these filaments, known as the ‘mycelium’, link up with the roots of certain trees and shrubs in what is called a ‘mycorrhizal’ relationship. This relationship benefits both parties. From the point of view of the tree, the filaments of the truffle become extensions of its own roots and enable it to draw up more sustenance, notably minerals, from the soil. For the truffle, the tree gives nourishment in the form of products synthesized by its leaves. This remarkable exchange is not achieved by mere contact between the mycelium of the truffle and the roots of the tree. They are organically bonded together by a special growth called a ‘mycorrhizal’.
So it is clear that the cultivation of truffles, which for obvious reasons has long been attempted, is on the one hand difficult (how to reproduce a natural phenomenon of such complexity?) but on the other hand possible (since young trees in a mycorrhizal condition can be transplanted). The would-be cultivator has to remember that the system only works with some kinds of tree (notably, but not exclusively, certain kinds of oak), in a limited range of climates, and on certain types of soil (a limestone base being preferred).
Other factors are also relevant. Rebière (1967), the doyen of truffle experts in the Périgord, lived not far from the little truffle museum in the village of Sorges. One striking feature of the areas where truffles grow is the ‘scorched earth’ area round a tree which has a mycorrhizal relationship with truffles, especially the black truffle. Virtually no other plants, except for those which need no water, can grow in such soil and the underground progress of the truffle mycelium can be charted by the spread of this barren ground. Rebière recorded some intriguing information about the ‘shock treatment’ which will help restore a former truffière to productivity again. Roadworks help, especially if heavy bulldozers are used. And having a local basketball team use a piece of ground for their games is another favourable factor.
The mycelium of the black truffle starts active growth in May and continues until July. The fruiting bodies are white when they first begin to form, then successively greyish and reddish, by which time they have reached full size. Finally, when they reach maturity, they are nearly black and veined white inside. There is often a long pause, perhaps of several months, between the time when a truffle reaches its full size and the time when it matures. This accounts for the length of the season, extending over five winter months.
Most truffles remain well underground. Skilled hunters may be able to detect from signs on the surface that a truffle is below; but the aid of animals or insects has to be invoked to ensure a full harvest. The aroma of a mature truffle can be detected by a pig or a dog, and it is these animals which have traditionally been trained to do the work. The pig has some disadvantages, especially for the truffle-poacher, since separating it from a truffle it has found is awkward; dogs are nimbler and less possessive.
The insects which help belong to the species Helomyza tuberiperda, and may be seen hovering over the spot where a truffle lies concealed. They hover with the intention of depositing their larvae on the truffles, little realizing what an expensive baby food they thus provide for their tiny offspring.
Even with these various aids, truffle-hunting is a skilled business, and one which is closely regulated. Truffling rights in a piece of land may be separated from ownership of the land itself. This is not surprising since an expert hunter working in good terrain may gather the equivalent of six months’ livelihood in a few weeks, if the summer weather has been right and the season a good one. The season runs from November to February, and even March, in the Périgord.
The supreme manner of enjoying truffles must no doubt be that described by Alexandre DUMAS père (1873), writing about the goings-on at the house of one of the ‘queens’ of the Paris theatre of his time, Mlle Georges, when offering supper to intimate friends after the show:
… at the house of [Mlle Georges], she who embodied every form of sensuality, no mercy was shown to the truffle, it was compelled to yield every sensation which it was capable of giving.
Hardly had she arrived home when perfumed water in a shallow basin of the most beautiful porcelain was brought to Georges, in which she washed her hands. Then the truffles were brought, truffles which had already been subjected to two or three ablutions and the same number of scrubbings; and, in a separate plate, a little vermilion fork and a little knife with a mother-of-pearl handle and a steel blade.
Then Agrippine, with her hand modelled on classical lines, with her fingers of marble and her rosy fingernails, started to peel the black tubercle, an ornament in her hand, in the most adroit fashion in the world. She cut it in thin tiny leaves, like paper, poured on some ordinary pepper and a few atoms of Cayenne pepper, impregnated them with white oil from Lucca or green oil from Aix, and then passed the salad bowl to a servant, who tossed the salad which she had prepared.
A modern connoisseur might suggest instead that whole truffles, unpeeled, be wrapped in several layers of cooking paper greased with goose fat, and roasted gently under hot cinders. But this would be for the very wealthy. Most people must be satisfied with the slivers of truffle to be found in pâté de foie gras truffé or with putting a tiny amount of truffle in a recipient used for storing eggs, which will then acquire a wonderful truffle aroma and flavour.
Another delicacy known as ‘truffle’ belongs to the realm of chocolate CONFECTIONERY. This is a cherry-sized ball of soft chocolate paste, often encased in a harder chocolate coating. If dusted with COCOA powder, as they often are, these are thought to look like freshly dug real truffles. Hence their name, which first became current in the 1920s.
the name of some Australasian fish of the family Latridae, related and similar to the MORWONG. The best known, and best to eat, is Latris lineata, the Tasmanian (or striped) trumpeter; the next best are Latridopsis ciliaris, called blue moki in New Zealand, and L. forsteri, the copper moki.
Roughley (1966), whose views are highly authoritative in this matter, describes the Tasmanian trumpeter as one of the six finest food fishes in Australian waters; ‘its flesh is white and firm, of splendid texture and delicious flavour.’
a S. American bird, Psophia crepitans, related to CRANES, BUSTARDS, and rails; it and two other close relations in the same genus belong to the order Gruiformes. Trumpeters enjoy a wholesome diet of berries and insects and are appreciated as food, especially when young.
Tubby birds, about 50 cm (20″) long in body, with long necks and long legs, trumpeters are gregarious, noisy, as befits their name, living mostly on the ground and nesting in tree holes. They are found mainly in the rain forests north of the Amazon, where destruction of their habitat has endangered their survival. However, they are easily domesticated and may be used to guard barnyard fowls in the same manner as GUINEA-FOWL.
In fact, according to Alexandre DUMAS (1873) an agami (as the French call the trumpeter) will gladly undertake a much wider range of duties, for example chasing dogs and cats out of the dining room and shepherding flocks of ducks and turkeys to their appointed places at the correct times. A friend of Dumas took two of the birds back to France, where they promptly assumed full control of his farmyard. Having their heads and necks, which are covered with short curly feathers, scratched was sufficient reward for them. However, Dumas relates that his friend lost one of the two agamis when it fell from a roof top and broke its back. ‘His interest in gourmandise caused him to taste its flesh, which he found delicious and certainly better than most of our chickens. The meat of the agami is in fact very delicate, and very much sought after.’
is the main staple of TIBET. The word tsampa means flour made from toasted grain, and the grain most commonly used for the purpose in Tibet is BARLEY. However, tsampa can also be made from wheat, corn, millet, oats, even soya beans.
Tsampa is consumed in several different ways. The simplest is as a drink, made by adding it to cold water or, more commonly, to tea. A soup (tsamtuk) is also made, using butter, soya beans, and cheese (chura). In addition, Tibetans use tsampa flour to make ‘cakes’ such as pag and sengong. Dorje (1985) explains the first of these thus:
This is a very common food of the monks and nuns in Tibet. Each person mixes his own pag in a bowl or cup, but it takes some practice. This is how it is done. When people are served tea, they blow the butter that floats on top to one side and drink the tea. Then when there is just a little tea and the butter left, they add some tsampa. The tsampa is mixed in with one hand rubbing the flour, tea, and butter against the inside of the cup, while the other hand holds the cup and turns it in the opposite direction. When everything is mixed into a stiff dough, the pag can be rolled into little balls and popped into the mouth. Things can be added to make the pag fancy, but basic pag is just butter, tea, tsampa and sugar.
Dorje’s mother is a Sherpa, so he speaks with good authority of the second ‘cake’, sengong, which is a Sherpa-style cake, mostly eaten in the southern part of the country and important in the Himalayas. The dough (of salted water, tsampa, and butter) is heated to thicken it, stirred a short while over a low heat, then served with a coating of butter and with hot tomato sauce. Tibetans pull off a chunk of the dough, roll it in the sauce and pop it in their mouths.
Paphies subtriangulata, an edible BIVALVE of New Zealand beaches. It is related to the TOHEROA, but is smaller and has heavier shells of a more noticeably triangular shape. Its distribution is much wider than that of the toheroa, and it is particularly abundant on the eastern beaches of the North Island. Clam-diggers are allowed to gather up to 150 per person daily.
The tuatua, being more common, does not enjoy as high a reputation as the toheroa, but is of comparable merit and makes a good soup. See also PIPI.
(French for ‘tile’), a kind of thin, crisp, sweet BISCUIT made of a light creamed mixture with egg whites, and sometimes ground or chopped almonds (in which case, tuiles aux amandes), flavoured with vanilla or grated orange or lemon peel. While the biscuits are still soft from baking they are laid on a curved surface such as a jam jar or rolling pin so that they take the shape of a typical S. European roof tile. Italian tegolino and Spanish teja are the same thing.
(or tunny), a group of large and medium-sized oceanic fish which are a food resource of primary importance.
The name tuna, like most general fish names, is not applied in a uniform way and does not always correspond to the scientific classification of these fish. With rare exceptions it is used only of fish in the family Scombridae, and within that family is reserved almost exclusively for members of the two genera Thunnus (all of whose members except one are always called tuna in English) and Euthynnus (where names such as little tunny, thonine, and kawakawa prevail). Within the same subfamily as these are two other genera, whose members are likely to be referred to in scientific works as tuna, but which have other common names and are the subjects of separate entries. These are Katsuwonus (one species only, often just called SKIPJACK rather than skipjack tuna), and Auxis (whose members are usually called FRIGATE MACKEREL). Close relations, with many of the same characteristics as tuna, include BONITO. For a catalogue of all these species see Bruce Collette and Cornelia Nauen (1983).
The principal tuna of the world, with their common names, maximum fork length, distribution, and special characteristics, are as follows (but see also SKIPJACK):
Tuna are warm-blooded fish, which are in constant need of oxygen. They can only obtain an adequate supply by swimming continuously at a fair speed (so that oxygen-rich water is incessantly rushing over their gills), and for this purpose they need very powerful muscles. It is this dark muscular meat, so different from the white flesh of most fish, that human beings enjoy eating. Large pieces of tuna may be braised like joints of meat. However, it is more usual to cut steaks which may be grilled (US broiled) or cooked in other ways; or not cooked at all, as when the Japanese eat choice fresh pieces of tuna as SASHIMI. So great is Japanese enthusiasm for tuna that they and N. Americans between them account for half the total catch, although Europe is now the largest market for canned tuna. See also TUNISIA for a good dish which uses canned tuna (see CANNED FOODS).
Since ARCHESTRATUS, tuna have been valued in S. Europe as well as in Japan and the Americas and their cookery may be assessed in Davidson (1979, 1981), although this may be considered in the light of Clover’s (2004) estimate of the decline in available stocks and their inability to supply rising demand. One response of the fishing industry has been to ‘farm’ tuna, which means catching infant specimens and fattening them in cages, resulting in a market glut today but probably natural dearth tomorrow.
a country whose culinary history embraces that of ancient Carthage (close to the city of Tunis), imperial Rome, the Ottoman Empire, and the Arab conquest of N. Africa, has also been exposed to strong Italian (especially Sicilian) influences, to even stronger French ones (during the period when Tunisia was a French Protectorate), besides showing traces (e.g. in the port of Sfax) of Greek influence. So it is a rich and complex cuisine. One of the best sources for studying it is a wonderfully erudite monograph by a French savant, Dr Gobert, which was published in 1940 in the Archives de l’Institut Pasteur in Tunis, but still awaits an English translator. In recent times, Mohammed El Kouki has done much to preserve the national repertoire of recipes in his huge compilation thereof.
The staple food is COUSCOUS, with lamb and MERGUEZ sausage, or chicken or fish, plus an ample provision of vegetables and a hot chilli sauce (HARISSA) as the standard accompaniment. A restaurant menu will often feature Briq à l’œuf as a first course to precede couscous. This is an egg cooked (by deep-frying) inside a triangle of paper-thin folded pastry (see WARQA), perhaps with a little tuna added. The trick is to lift up the triangle and consume it all in judicious bites without spilling any egg. A liking for briqs, once acquired, stays for a lifetime and inevitably draws briq-eaters back to Tunisia or to Tunisian restaurants.
Until the last two decades of the 20th century, Mediterranean fish and other seafood were in ample supply, landed from small fishing boats and sold in bewildering profusion in the markets of the coastal cities and towns. Various factors, notably the growing demands of tourist hotels (pleasantly landscaped and unobtrusive, but numerous) and pollution and overfishing in the Mediterranean, have replaced this happy situation by one in which short supply and high prices put seafood out of the reach of most Tunisians. The following description of going out for a fish supper in the 1960s is now nothing but a fond memory:
La Goulette, which takes its name from being the ‘throat’ of the ship canal which connects Tunis itself with the sea, is the site of a group of fish restaurants, which extend their tables far out over the pavements and the square during the summer. What pleasure it was to sup there, starting with a chakchouka and going on to eat a grilled daurade or grey mullet selected from the glass-fronted cabinet in front of the restaurant, with family parties of Tunisians all round, the men in their cool white djebbahs, jasmine-sellers brushing past one’s elbow, the legion of La Goulette cats brushing past one’s ankles, and primitive strings of coloured lamps switched on overhead as dusk fell. Here was no nonsense of complicated menus—just marvellously good fish charcoal-grilled and served with plenty of chopped parsley and lemon.
Tunisian sweetmeats, based on Arab traditions, are a delight. For those who find many of them too heavily laden with calories, there are the Tunisian DATES from the desert oases and elsewhere in the south, as well as numerous other fruits—oranges, lemons, grapes, etc.
Regional variations in the food include the presence of wild boar and many edible fungi in the north-west. The tiny island of Galita, which can be reached from Bizerta, is a great place for SPINY LOBSTER. The promontory of Cap Bon has traditionally been the scene of the annual TUNA fishery, which involves guiding the migrating fish by stages into a large trap, the ‘death chamber’, where they are dispatched. This is like the matanza of Sicily. Tunisian ways with tuna, apart from grilling fresh steaks, include a particularly enjoyable cold dish, Salade meshouiwa: a little canned tuna; seared sweet peppers, tomatoes, garlic, and onion; hard-boiled eggs; seasoning with caraway as well as salt and pepper; lemon juice and olive oil, and black olives to garnish.
Psetta maxima, a FLATFISH with an extensive range: from the Black Sea through the Mediterranean and up the European Atlantic coasts as far as the Arctic Circle. It may reach a length of 1 m (just over 3′), but half this is a normal adult size. The colour of the back is generally greyish or sandy brown, and it is noticeable that most scales develop into tiny bony tubercles. In the Black Sea region, these tubercles become much more prominent, indeed larger than the fish’s eyes, which accounts for the vernacular names there (meaning ‘nail-head’, for example), and has also caused scientists to distinguish the Black Sea turbots as a subspecies, P. m. maeotica.
The great breadth of the turbot’s body accounts for an old Scots name, bannock-fluke (bannock being a round oatcake, and fluke a general name for left-eyed flatfish).
The main fishery for the turbot in Atlantic waters is in the North Sea. The numbers caught are not great, indeed very small in relation to the demand. The firm white flesh is highly esteemed, and is often honoured with an expensive sauce (e.g. lobster sauce, sauce mousseline) in restaurants. The French writer BRILLAT-SAVARIN has a memorable anecdote about the procedure devised for steaming a giant turbot; and this is a useful reminder that steaming is an excellent way of cooking it. However, slices cut across and fried, with the skin still on, are also delicious. Various authorities have urged the desirability of eating skin and (this from Jenny Wren, 1880) fins.
with reference to birds, was originally a prefix to the terms cock, hen, and poult (a young bird), but now stands on its own and denotes the species Meleagris gallopavo. Native to N. America, these birds are now farmed and used for table poultry around the globe. A book by Schorger (1966) provides much historical information about the bird and its transformation into a global food item.
The nomenclature of turkeys in modern European languages and scientific Latin reflects confusion about the origin and nature of the birds on their arrival from the New World. They were confused in European minds with GUINEA-FOWL, and probably peacocks too. Linnaeus used Meleagris, the Roman name for guinea-fowl, when naming the genus to which turkeys belong. Europeans called turkeys by names reflecting a supposed eastern origin, including coq d’Inde (cock of India), later corrupted to dinde or dindon in French. The English, who may have had their first birds through the agency of the Levant or Turkey merchants, settled on ‘turkey-cock’.
Wild turkeys of N. America are much leaner and more streamlined birds than their modern descendants. In their natural state they live in flocks, roosting in swampy areas and feeding on woodland berries and seeds. They are awkward in flight but run fast. Two distinct races of wild turkey are known—one whose range originally covered eastern N. America from Canada to Texas, and another from further south, around the Gulf of Mexico. The Mexican variety may have been more important, as it appears to have been more adaptable and easily domesticated, but the pre-Columbian history of the turkey is obscure. It is thought to have been domesticated late in the 2nd millennium BC, somewhere in C. America. By the time of the Spanish Conquest, it was reared as a table bird and eaten by royalty. The earliest full description of turkeys in the New World was given by Bernardino de Sahagún (1529) who recommended the meat of the hen as fat and savoury, and recorded several modes of preparation, including in TAMALES.
When turkeys reached the Old World, they appear (unlike other foods from the Americas, such as tomatoes and potatoes) to have diffused swiftly and been consumed enthusiastically. In England in 1541, they were cited amongst large birds such as cranes and swans in sumptuary laws; their prices had been fixed in the London markets by the mid-1550s; and Tusser (1557) spoke of feeding turkeys on runcivall pease, and of eating them at Christmas.
Liliane Plouvier, in a learned paper (of the 1980s) about the early history of turkeys in Europe, found that, in France, Queen Marguerite of Navarre is recorded to have raised turkeys at Alençon in 1534; and 66 turkeys were served at a feast for Catherine de’ Medici in 1549. In Belgium, turkey prepared in three different ways (boiled with oysters; roast and served cold; and in a pasty) was served in 1557 at a banquet held in Liège. Reasons for this speedy acceptance are not hard to find. The turkey would have been seen as similar to the domestic poultry familiar in Europe since ancient times, and confused with guinea-fowl; and there was anyway a firm medieval precedent for eating all sorts of fowl, wild and tame, large and small.
Amongst settlers in N. America, the turkey also proved popular. In 1609 the inhabitants of Jamestown, reduced almost to starvation, were kept alive by gifts of wild game, including ‘turkies’, from the indigenous population. Wild turkeys were served at the second THANKSGIVING dinner in 1621, and may have featured in the first, of 1620.
Describing how, during the 17th and 18th centuries, turkeys became established as farmyard fowls in England, C. Anne Wilson (1974) explains that great numbers of them would be driven to London on foot, starting in August at the end of the harvest, from as far afield as Suffolk and Norfolk.
Although poorly adapted to cold, damp climates, the turkey gradually displaced the GOOSE as a Christmas meat in Britain, and comments from 19th-century observers show that turkeys raised in Britain achieved a large size. At the end of the 19th century, the two main breeds were the Norfolk Black and the Cambridge Bronze. The former is a much leaner bird with less breast meat than turkeys now commonly reared, and lost popularity because after the black feathers had been plucked the skin was left with a pitted appearance. The bronze did not share this problem and was cross-bred for increased size with N. American stock to give a creature known as the American Mammoth Bronze; but eventually this was ousted by white types which owe much to American and continental European stock.
When it came to cooking turkeys, they were rapidly assimilated into various styles of cuisine contemporary with their arrival in Europe. Plouvier, examining early recipes, found that there were several for turkey in Italy by 1570 (e.g. in Scappi’s Opera dell’arte del cucinare); besides being spit roasted, made into paupiettes or little poached QUENELLES, they could be stuffed, stuck with cloves, encased in a coarse crust with the head exposed, and baked. Recipes were published in Germany by the 1580s, but turkey recipes only appeared in France during the ‘culinary renaissance’ of the 17th century, when La Varenne gave several recipes, including one requiring a truffle-perfumed bouillon.
In England, turkeys were being made into pies during the reign of Elizabeth I, and soon afterwards Gervase Markham (1615) recommended that they should be roast, and served with a sauce of onions, flavoured with claret, orange juice, and lemon peel.
From the 18th century onwards, turkeys were firmly established in the European culinary mainstream. Originally associated with high status (although sometimes with a satirical turn, witness the 19th-century name ‘Alderman in Chains’ for a roast turkey garnished with festoons of sausages), they spread easily from the tables of the aristocracy onto those of the bourgeoisie, and then in more recent times onto everyone’s table, at least as a food for special occasions, and nowadays as a year-round addition to the available range of ‘white meats’.
Laura Mason
a country whose history is mirrored in its food. Applying the archaeological concept of strata to Turkish cuisine reveals fairly distinct stages of evolution, successively superimposed on each other. One can discern Far Eastern, C. Asian, Iranian, Anatolian, and Mediterranean layers, each of them reflecting one stage in the long and complex history of migration that has enabled the Turkish people both to exert and to receive influence all across Eurasia.
The comparison with archaeology is particularly apt for the earliest period of Turkish history, one characterized by nomads, wandering in the marches of China; see box.
The recorded history of Turkish cuisine begins in about the 10th century, when the Turks came into contact with the Irano-Islamic culture and definitively entered the orbit of Islamic religion and civilization. They thus came to share a cuisine which had already evolved through a process of exchange between different ethnic groups; and they made their own contributions, including bulghur wheat (see BURGHUL) and BÖREK, plus the stew called güveç (see GYUVECH).
The earliest settled Turkish culture of note was that of the Uyghurs, who established their kingdom in the mid-8th century in what is now Xinjiang. The Uyghurs were under the strong cultural influence of China, and it is most likely during the period of their flourishing that mantı (see MANTOU) entered the diet of the Turks. A kind of dumpling still eaten with enthusiasm by virtually all the Turkish peoples, this dish may derive its name from the Chinese. It should not be thought, however, that culinary influences flowed in only one direction. The delight taken in stuffing not only pasta but also intestines and vegetables is so widespread and constant a feature in Turkish cuisine (see, for example, DOLMA) that it would be difficult to regard it as a mere borrowing. On the contrary the presence of stuffed dishes in the cuisine of N. China may well be a symptom of Turkish influence, although it is possible that the transmission took place in the era of Mongol dominion, some six centuries later.
Entering the Spice Bazaar today is still a dramatic experience. With little transition from the street to the entrance, which is festooned with the gaudy displays of the newspaper- and magazine-sellers, one leaves behind the bustle and the often inclement weather of the outside world—heat and dust in the summer, rain and mud in the winter—to be enveloped immediately in a vast, dimly lit realm redolent with hundreds of scents. Apart from the often dazzling electric lights that highlight the displays in each shop, light is provided only by glass-covered apertures high in the vaulted ceiling that arches over the market. On each side of a walkway broad enough to take two lanes of traffic stand hundreds of shops offering the most varied kinds of foodstuffs. The Spice Bazaar is in fact like a permanent exhibition of Turkish foodstuffs. Here you will find not only every type of spice both familiar and unfamiliar but also dried roots and barks used for medicinal purposes; a great variety of cheeses; sucuk and pastırma; honey, both in jars and honeycomb; black and green olives; almonds, walnuts, hazelnuts, and pistachios; dried fruit and herbs; rice and other grains; clarified butter; rosewater and bergamot oil; and a host of other items the precise nature and use of which are a mystery to the uninitiated.
The first important literary monument of the Muslim Turks is a remarkable Turkish–Arabic dictionary, the Diwan Lughat al-Turk, composed in the late 11th century by Mahmud al-Kashghari. Replete with precious information on the material culture of the Turks, this dictionary demonstrates among other things the ancient lineage of much of present-day Turkish cuisine. Mahmud al-Kashghari lists terms relating to the preparation of bread and other dough products: varieties of bread such as yufka (see LAVASH), ak ekmek, kara ekmek, and kevşek; implements such as the oklava (rolling pin); and methods of cooking such as the use of the tandır (clay oven, see TANDOOR), and the sac (GRIDDLE), as well as burying the dough in warm ashes (gömmec). We also learn from this source that a fondness for milk products such as YOGHURT, AYRAN (yoghurt drink), and various types of cheese—something alien to the culinary traditions of China—was already well established among the Turks.
As the Turks moved westward through C. Asia toward the Islamic Middle East, they came into contact with the highly evolved and sophisticated urban culture of the Iranians. This was to leave an indelible Iranian imprint on the language and literature of the Turks as well as on many other aspects of their cultural life. But despite their far-reaching subordination to Iranian models, the Turks maintained to a large extent autonomy in culinary matters. This was particularly remarkable given the high prestige of Iranian cuisine in the early Islamic world; many of the words found in the most ancient Arabic cookbooks are Persian, and the caliphs of Baghdad always prided themselves on the consumption of elaborate Iranian dishes. The Turks, too, came to appreciate some elements of Iranian cuisine, for example, stews in which fruits and meats were combined. Vegetable stews, known as yakhni, were also absorbed from the Iranians into Turkish cuisine.
The fact that the word KEBAB is of Persian origin might suggest that the Turks learned something about grilling meats from the Iranians. However, Mahmud al-Kashghari informs us that the Turks were already acquainted with the art of cooking meat on skewers, which is indeed obvious (it stands to reason that nomadic Turks should have practised this convenient and easy method of cooking). So although the Iranians supplied the generic name for kebab dishes, there is no reason to attribute to them the numerous specific kinds of kebab which are characteristic of Turkish cuisine.
Similar remarks apply to pilav (see PILAF). The word itself is the Turkicized version of the Persian polow, and rice was cultivated in Iran, as well as elsewhere in the Middle East, long before the arrival there of the Turks, who had known nothing of it while they lived in C. Asia. But in early Iranian and Iranian-influenced Arab cuisine, rice was chiefly used in desserts and as a starch accompaniment to fish. The emergence of pilaf dishes, in all their rich variety, seems to have accompanied the rise to prominence of the Turkish element in the Islamic world.
At about the same time that Mahmud al-Kashghari was compiling his dictionary thousands of miles further east, one branch of the Turkish peoples was beginning to settle in Anatolia. This was the start of a process that led to the Islamization and Turkicization of most of Anatolia and the triumphant installation of the Ottoman Turks in Istanbul, at the junction of Europe and Asia, where for centuries they determined the destinies of the Balkans, the Arab world, and much of the Mediterranean basin.
The chief predecessors of the Ottomans in the Turkicization of Anatolia were the Seljuqs, a branch of the great dynasty that had once ruled much of the eastern Islamic world. Their seat of rule was the city of Konya, a brilliant centre of culture that attracted scholars, poets, and mystics from various regions of the Islamic world. The cuisine was correspondingly lavish and cosmopolitan.
Much culinary information on the Seljuq period is to be found in the works of the great mystic and poet Mevlana Jalal-al-Din Rumi. Thanks to Mevlana, we know that a whole variety of vegetables, pulses, nuts, fruits, breads, buns, pastries, sweets, milk products, and pickles were available in Seljuq Anatolia. Further details are in an essay by Feyzi Halıcı (1988), who also describes Mevlana’s cosmology and philosophy, his preferences and pleasures (SHERBET, HALVA, GARLIC, dancing the ‘whirling dervish’ dance), and mentions the tomb of his cook Ateşbazı-Veli, near Konya, one of the principal shrines in the world for gastronomic pilgrims.
The Ottoman period of Turkish history has its roots in the 13th century, but begins blooming to full splendour with the conquest of Istanbul in 1453. Largely rebuilt by Sultan Mehmed the Conqueror after its capture from the Byzantines, the city became home to a great variety of peoples from within and without the Ottoman domains. The Ottomans subsidized the arts in huge ateliers, the culinary equivalent of which were the vast kitchens of the Topkapi palace. Within a generation, as the result of this previously unparalleled cultural mixing, there was a distinct Ottoman style in all the decorative arts, and also in cookery.
The Topkapi palace kitchen and its staff were greatly expanded in the course of time, especially under Sultan Süleyman the Magnificent. At one time the staff numbered 1370, a figure which is less astonishing if one takes into account the extraordinary degree of specialization in the kitchens. The preparation of soups, kebabs, pilafs, jam, drinks such as hoşaf (see KHOSHAB), sherbet, and boza (a fermented drink usually made from MILLET) each represented a separate skill to be learned as an apprentice and refined in a lifetime of labour. So high was the degree of specialization that by the mid-18th century each of six varieties of HALVA was assigned to a separate master chef, with a hundred apprentices working under him.
Further information about the scale of catering at the Topkapi palace (to feed as many as 10,000 people) and the importance of food during the Ottoman period for the corps of Janissaries and for the tarikats, the Sufi brotherhoods, is provided by Ayla Algar (1991).
The palace enjoyed, no doubt, an exceptional degree of culinary riches, but what is known about the food markets of Istanbul suggests that the general population also fared well. Evliya çelebi, the celebrated 17th-century traveller, provides us with a detailed and vivid account of the food-related guilds of Istanbul. These included bakers and butchers, cheese-makers and yoghurt-merchants, pastry chefs and pickle-makers, and fishmongers and sausage-merchants.
Some of the markets (especially the Egyptian Spice Bazaar—see box on page 812) are still functioning, and there is still a large presence of street vendors selling a great diversity of foods.
However, Istanbul has always been exceptionally fortunate. To keep a proper balance, one must look at the foodways of the huge rural population of Turkey. These have been remarkably stable over many centuries and are distinguished by simplicity.
Throughout Turkey, the staples are bread (ekmek) and yoghurt. Bread may be leavened or unleavened. An example of the latter is yufka, described under LAVASH. Everyday Turkish breads, which some people (not only Turks) count as just about the best in Europe, are well described by Ayla Algar (1991). They include the Turkish version of PITTA bread, called pide, which are soft, oval or round, bread ‘pouches’ which can be stuffed or simply used for mopping up other foods. Yoghurt was brought by early Turcoman nomads from C. Asia and is made from buffalo, cow, goat, or sheep milk. It can be dried into doughlike cakes and preserved for months, or drained to make cheese, or diluted to make the drink AYRAN. It is used raw or in cooking or as a sauce, sweet or savoury.
The use of OLIVE OIL is confined to the western parts. Edible fungi and wild food plants (see Evelyn Kalças, 1974) are eaten where they occur. WHEAT is grown almost everywhere, although on the Black Sea MAIZE flour is common and elsewhere MILLET, OATS, or BARLEY may be the predominant grain. The sweetening is provided variously by fruit, dried fruit, HONEY, or PEKMEZ. Either beans (to make fasulya) or CHICKPEAS are widely consumed. Other ingredients which are constantly used in Turkish kitchens are LAMB, AUBERGINES, NUTS.
Turks living in coastal regions, whether of the Mediterranean or the Black Sea or the Bosporus which connects them, have enjoyed the additional bounty of seafood and display considerable discrimination in selecting and cooking it. Their enthusiasm for hamsi (ANCHOVY) has inspired a number of interesting folk poems (see Davidson, 1981). Among larger fish, BONITO, BLUEFISH, TURBOT, and SWORDFISH are greatly appreciated. Annual migrations of many species through the Bosporus used to permit very large catches being made.
It is remarkable to reflect that Istanbul was already after the fall of the Roman Empire the hub of BYZANTINE COOKERY, of which few traces remain; that it served as one of the greatest entrepôts in the SPICE TRADE; that it then became the focal point of Ottoman cuisine, which exerted such a powerful influence on the Balkans and certain countries in C. Europe; and that a visitor to Turkey at the end of the 20th century will find everywhere, not only in this great city, evidence of enduring food traditions which involve most of Asia and much of Europe, symbolically joined by the Bosporus bridges.
See also: AŞURE; BAKLAVA; DONER KEBAB; SHORBA; TUTMAÇ; TURKISH DELIGHT.
Ayla Algar
READING:
should really be known by its Turkish name, lokum (or rahat lokum, or loucoum). It is first recorded in a manuscript dating from the late 18th or early 19th century, and foreign travellers were extolling it from the early 1830s. Although its invention is often attributed to Hadji Bekir, who came from Anatolia to Istanbul in 1776 then rose to be chief confectioner to the Sultan, there is no hard evidence for this. The sweetmeat was first exported to England c.1850 and was initially known as ‘lumps of delight’. Dickens refers to a ‘lumps of delight shop’ in The Mystery of Edwin Drood (1870).
Turkish delight evolved from earlier sweetmeats made from wheat starch and sweetened syrup or grape juice. It is a delicate but gummy jelly made by cooking a mixture of syrup and cornflour slowly for several hours, after which the mixture is poured out, left to set, and cut into cubes which are rolled in icing sugar. Flavours vary, and many are family or trade secrets. Most are based on lemon or lemon and orange juice, and rose or orange flower water are also added for flavour. MASTIC is often used and chopped nuts may also be added.
a spice and colouring agent obtained from the rhizomes of Curcuma longa, a herbaceous perennial plant native to India or SE Asia. It is now widely cultivated in the tropics, but India remains by far the largest producer. The plant was taken into cultivation in very early times, probably in the first instance for its dye, and no longer occurs in its wild form.
The double role of turmeric in food preparation is matched only by PAPRIKA among the common spices. However, it is more often compared with, or substituted for, the expensive SAFFRON. When Marco Polo found turmeric in China in 1280, he described it as ‘a vegetable which has all the properties of true saffron, as well the smell as the colour, and yet it is not really saffron’. This was an exaggeration, since aroma and flavour are not alike, but the yellow of turmeric does resemble that of saffron. This accounts for the French name safran d’Inde and other similar names.
Turmeric rhizomes, of which the central ones are bulbous and the others of ‘finger’ shape, are cured, dried, and cleaned before sale. Their interior is yellow, due to the presence of the pigment curcumin, and the exterior of rhizomes packed for sale may be coated with turmeric powder to enhance their appearance.
Although turmeric is used as a cosmetic, and as a dye for cloth and a simple colouring agent for food and drink, its main use in Asia is as a condiment. When thus used it always adds colour too; and it is often the principal ingredient of CURRY POWDER, to which it gives the dominant yellowish hue. Madras turmeric, the kind usually imported to Britain, is a mixture of cultivars suitable for this purpose. In N. America, turmeric is used more as a simple food colourant, and Alleppey turmeric from Kerala, which is a mixture of cultivars with a particularly high tinctorial power, is preferred.
The volatile oil of turmeric is not itself of commercial importance but supplies most of the aroma, and therefore the flavour, of the spice. The colour is supplied by curcumin and other curcuminoid pigments.
Besides being an essential ingredient of curry powder, turmeric is often used by itself for colouring and flavouring foodstuffs, including fish dishes. It is used in mustard pickles, and sometimes to colour butter or cheese and certain sweetmeats.
Turmeric has close relations with similar properties: see ZEDOARY.
Brassica rapa, one of the earliest cultivated vegetables, is thought to have originated in N. Europe in about 2000 BC from a variety of bird rape, B. rapa ssp campestris. The ‘root’ (not a real root, but the swollen base of the stem) of the wild plant is edible but spindly. Selection over the centuries would have produced larger turnips, of which there were already many varieties in the classical period.
Roman writers, e.g. Columella in AD 42, distinguished between two main types of turnips: ‘napus’, which was relatively slender, pointed, and delicate; and ‘rapa’, which was large and round. Ever since, there has been confusion over how to classify turnips. The current arrangement is to call the common white turnip B. rapa; to assign its relatives the SWEDE and rutabaga to B. napus ssp rapifera; and RAPE, grown for its oil-bearing seeds, to B. napus. But this is not universally agreed.
From ‘rapa’ is derived the common name ‘rape’ which, however, is now given to other species, notably B. napus. From ‘napus’ comes the Scottish word for a turnip, ‘neep’ (but Scots prefer swedes, so it is swedes which they mean when they use the name); the word ‘turnip’ itself; and the French navet (via the diminutive napetus and the tendency to turn a ‘p’ into a ‘b’ or ‘v’).
Turnips were an important food for the Romans, especially in the time of the Republic, before their Empire spread and brought in rich agricultural lands. At the beginning of the 3rd century BC the war hero and consul Curius Dentatus was approached by envoys from the hostile Samnites while he was roasting turnips over a fire. They offered him a large amount of gold to defect to their side; but he preferred to attend to his turnips. In this moral tale the turnip is presented as a simple, rustic food.
The turnip spread from the classical world through Asia to N. China, where it had become a common vegetable well before the medieval period in Europe, and it was taken from China to Japan about 1,300 years ago.
The Chinese, like Curius Dentatus, have traditionally cooked turnips by roasting. The high temperature increases the sweetness of the vegetable by converting some of the starch to tasty, brown pyrodextrins in the crisp outside. The Japanese use turnips freely, especially in pickled form and carved in a chrysanthemum shape.
In Europe, the French have devoted most care to turnips, and there are various parts of France which are famous for growing specially good ones. The French pick turnips young, in early summer, when no larger than a small orange, and braise them or fry and glaze them. They are the traditional accompaniment to certain dishes, e.g. Canard aux navets. The habit of serving plain boiled turnips, often large and old winter specimens, seems to have been characteristic of English-speaking countries.
Turnip tops, like other brassica greens, are edible and good. They appear briefly on the market when the turnip crop is thinned in March.
Pickled turnips have been immensely popular in the Arab world, usually coloured pink by putting a bit of beetroot in the pickling jar. Turnips are also pickled in Korea, for example. In China, they are sun dried in strips, then salted or preserved in soy sauce; and round turnips are sometimes preserved whole.
In Japan the leaves and roots are used for pickles, but the root is also boiled and eaten with YUZU-flavoured MISO.
a general term for a PASTY made by folding a sheet of pastry over a lump of filling and sealing the edge. A circle of pastry gives a semicircular turnover; a square gives a triangular one. Turnovers range in size from tiny to large enough for several helpings, as in the family-sized version of the Cornish pasty.
a name which can be used loosely of all the four-limbed reptiles in the order Chelonia, but is best reserved for the aquatic members of the order (TORTOISE being the preferred name for those which live on dry land). Of the aquatic turtles, the marine species are described under SEA TURTLES, while the present entry is devoted to freshwater turtles and the general question of turtle cookery.
Turtles which live in fresh or brackish water occur in and are eaten in most regions of the world. They are commonly grouped into categories such as the following:
Turtles have posed a problem for those who frame or interpret religious laws. They could be eaten during Lent by Catholic monks, anyway in some places. But they are a forbidden food for Jews (Leviticus 11: 29).
So far as turtle cookery is concerned, the one outstanding dish is, or was, turtle soup. So far as England is concerned, this subject is covered under SEA TURTLES, since it was marine species which were used there. In N. America, however, terrestrial turtles could be used and the snapping turtle has been described as the great soup turtle of the Mississippi basin. Authorities on both sides of the Atlantic agree that turtle soup should not be attempted in the domestic kitchen but bought from a specialist maker or prepared by experts in a banquet context. However, dried turtle meat was formerly in demand for making the soup on a smaller scale; it was said that 110 g (4 oz) of it would yield soup for a dozen or more persons. The important subject of MOCK TURTLE SOUP has its own entry.
a Turkish word meaning NOODLES which in one form or another is found in the remotest corners of the Turkish-speaking world, from the Tatars on the middle Volga to the Salars in Gansu province, China, and the isolated pagan Turkish nationalities of the Altai mountains.
In his 11th-century dictionary of Turkish dialects, Mahmud al-Kashghari recorded a pleasant and quite unbelievable folk-tale about how tutmach was invented at the behest of Alexander the Great, whom he refers to by his Koranic name, Dhu al-Qarnain:
When Dhu al-Qarnain emerged from Zulumat [the Land of Darkness where the sun disappears when it sets, and the Fountain of Youth is to be found], his people had little food and complained to him of hunger, and said to him, ‘Bizni tutma ach’, that is ‘Do not keep us here hungry, let us go so that we can return to our homes.’ He consulted the wise men on that subject so that this food might be produced, tutmach. It strengthens the body, reddens the cheeks and is quickly digested, and after the tutmach is eaten, the broth is drunk several-fold. When the Turks saw that, tutmach was named, its root being tutma ach, that is ‘Do not cause hunger.’
In Xinjiang the modern Uyghurs tell the exact same story about PILAF (specifying that the wise men were Aristotle, Socrates, Hippocrates, and Plato). This reflects the fact that pilaf has assumed the role of the grand dish of hospitality, which tutmach had enjoyed in the Middle Ages.
In Turkey the noodle soup called Tutmaç çorbasi survives in the folk cuisine of Anatolia to the present day. The dough (made from wheat flour, egg, and water) is cut into squares which are then fried before being added to the soup. This had been a dish of the court cuisine of the Seljuqs and retained its high standing until at least the 15th century, but then lost its pride of place to PILAF and was not a dish incorporated into the classical Ottoman cuisine.
Other medieval Turkish noodles survive today in Turkey and C. Asia. Salma are small noodles in the shape of coins or shells and ovmaç (or umaç) are small pellet-like soup noodles.
Charles Perry
a cake made for Twelfth Night, the last of the twelve days of Christmas. Now a celebration of Epiphany, the occasion when the three Kings visited the infant Jesus, this festival has inherited some of the pagan customs associated with Roman Saturnalia, when slaves were allowed many privileges including eating with and gambling against their masters. Dice were thrown to choose a ‘king’, and everyone had to obey his command. The two ancient traditions involving kings were interwoven to give the modern Twelfth Night custom of choosing a ‘king’ by dividing a cake containing a token—a dried bean or a china doll. The finder gains privileges or pays forfeits, depending on the custom of the country. Sometimes a dried pea, for a queen, is also included. (For the French Twelfth Night cake, and corresponding comments, see galette des rois under GALETTE.)
The custom of the ‘Twelfth cake’, complete with bean, flourished for centuries in England. During the late 17th century, the series of tokens included in the cake (at this time, a fruit cake leavened with yeast) expanded. Bridget Ann Henisch (1984) cites Henry Teonge, a naval chaplain, who wrote in 1676 that
we had a great cake made, in which was put a bean for the King, a pea for the queen, a clove for a knave, a forked stick for the cuckold and a rag for the slut. The cake was cut into several pieces in the great cabin, and all put into a napkin, out of which each took his piece, as out of a lottery; the each piece is broken to see what was in it, which caused much laughter, to see our Lieutenant prove the cuckold, and more to see us tumble one over the other in the cabin, by reason of the rough weather.
During the 18th century the tokens became a series of characters printed on paper which were cut out, folded, and drawn from a hat. The custom eventually declined in the middle of the century, though a vestige survives in the coins or tokens that are still put into a CHRISTMAS PUDDING. In 1794 the actor Robert Baddeley left £100 to be invested to provide a cake for all those acting at Drury Lane Theatre on Twelfth Night.
In France a little china token or a bean is included in the filling of the galette des rois; the person who finds the bean in their portion becomes king or queen for the evening. As early as the 13th century, the street cries of Paris included gastel à fève orroriz—the cake with the King’s bean. There are similar old traditions elsewhere. In Spain, the roscón de reyes is ring shaped, decorated with candied fruit, and contains a sorpresa, a coin or a little ceramic figurine to bring luck to the finder, but in Mexico the finder of the china doll in the Kings’ Day ring must give a party at Candlemas. A similar custom is observed in New Orleans, where King cakes are BRIOCHES iced in purple, green, and gold, containing a plastic baby; the finder of the baby is supposed to give the next party. The Portuguese also make a ring-shaped cake; mixed with port and stiff with candied fruit, the bolo rei is available throughout the Christmas season. In Portugal, the finder of the bean has to provide the next year’s bolo rei. Swiss and German Dreikönigskuchen are wreaths or rounds of rich bread, each with an almond concealed in it to confer kingship on the lucky finder.
a Jewish culinary term thus described by Claudia Roden (1996) as:
a general term for a sweet vegetable or meat dish. Just as Oriental Sephardi Jews inherited a taste for meat with fruit from tenth century Baghdad, Ashkenazi Jews acquired similar tastes in medieval Germany.
Roden remarks that in Yiddish lore sliced carrots are associated with gold coins, and carrot tzimmes (glazed with honey) is a dish which is eaten as a symbol of prosperity at Rosh Hashana (the New Year). However, meat-and-prune tzimmes is probably the most popular. Roden states that S. African Jews of Lithuanian origin seem particularly fond of it, and that it is often eaten at a harvest festival. Because of the festive image of these dishes, the word tzimmes has acquired the colloquial meaning of ‘a big fuss’.