couscous-msg - 9/23/18
Medieval couscous, a berber dish of semolina (granules of durum wheat).
NOTE: See also the files: pasta-msg, Pasta-Hndout-art, rice-msg, grains-msg, buckwheat-msg, Ancent-Grains-art, flour-msg, Arabs-msg, breadcrumbs-msg.
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From wiki-pedia:
Couscous (/ˈkʊskʊs/ or /ˈkuːskuːs/) (Berber: seksu) is a traditional Berber dish of semolina (granules of durum wheat) which is cooked by steaming. It is traditionally served with a meat or vegetable stew spooned over it. Couscous is a staple food throughout the North African cuisines of Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Mauritania and Libya.
Couscous served with fish is also a staple food in Western Sicily, and is featured as a traditional food product officially recognized by the Italian Ministry of Agricultural, Food and Forestry Policies.
Date: Fri, 25 Oct 2013 12:29:32 -0400 (EDT)
From: JIMCHEVAL at aol.com
To: sca-cooks at lists.ansteorra.org
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Serving stuff over rice
betsy at softwareinnovation.com writes:
<<< Which brings to mind a query; how/when was couscous (i.e. tiny balls of
wheat, or pasta) used? Maybe rice came in later and was adapted to this use?
Pyro >>>
I'm inclined to doubt it, if only because a prepared food is more likely to
have come after one that occurs in nature.
This paper on pasta in the Muslim world cites a reference to coucous from
the fifteenth century (78, n9):
Les p?tes dans le monde musulman
Bernard Rosenberger lien M?di?vales lien Year 1989 lien Volume
8 lien Issue 16-17 lien pp. 77-98
http://www.persee.fr/web/revues/home/prescript/article/medi_0751-2708_1989_n
um_8_16_1138
The first Western reference I find to couscous is from 1649:
"Ils ne mangent presque point de viandes rosties, &se nourrissent
ordinairement de ris, de couscous, de mouton ,de veau, de boeuf, ?c de volaille bo?illie."
"They eat almost no roast meats, and feed themselves normally with rice,
with couscous, with mutton, veal, beef and boiled meat."
http://books.google.com/books?id=VmFUAAAAcAAJ&;pg=PA281&dq=couscous&hl=en&sa=
X&ei=ypZqUqzpHsj5igLNnoDAAQ&ved=0CO8CEOgBMC8#v=onepage&q&f=false
Accounts of the dish manage to reflect racial attitudes pretty quickly -
this from 1820:
"Fali Loum was the name of the chief; he invited us to enter his hut, and,
indeed, gave it up to our use. This old man pitying the fatigues that I had
undergone, asked my Marabout what dishes 1 liked best. When supper was
ready, we all three seated ourselves before a wooden bowl tilled with boiled
millet, here called couscous. The daughter of Fali Loum brought us water for
our ablutions, and presented it to me on her knees, a kind of homage paid
to the whites, which made me prognosticate a successful issue to my African
travels.
;In.twenty-four hours, what a change! No rare dishes now, no highly
seasoned ragouts, no expensive wines; milk, couscous, and water, were our only sustenance. The guests raised the food to their mouths, with the right hand alone. I was busy in thought, when Fali Loum remarking my want of appetite, ejaculated: "Thou dost not find here the good cheer of white men; how wilt thou accustom thyself to our mode of life?" A mat spread on the ground served me for a bed. From fatigue, I felt no difference from that which I had quitted."
http://books.google.com/books?pg=RA1-PA10&;dq=couscous&ei=eJRqUuPKHYSLjAKa4oC
YCw&id=TnYBAAAAYAAJ#v=onepage&q=couscous&f=false
From 1880:
"Abominable couscous! How many times have I been awakened before it was day
by the noise of the pestle with which it was being pounded! I was lodged
in a house the ground floor of which was occupied by three or four Joloff
families, and every morning, or rather every night, for they were at work by
four o'clock, I was aroused from my slumbers by the grating monotonous
noise of the pestle. One day I could stand it no longer, and went down to ask what it was, and it was thus that I learnt how the national dish is
prepared. A mortar scooped out of a hollow tree, and nearly three feet high,
contains the millet or maize to be ground; the negress, who is standing, holds with both hands a heavy wooden pestle, which she raises and lets fall with the regularity of clockwork. In order to keep her infant quiet, she often has it tied to her back with a cloth. Not very hard to please, the poor child makes a pillow of his mother's back and finishes his sleep in this uncomfortable position, which, however, seems to suit him well enough."
http://books.google.com/books?pg=PA57&;dq=couscous&ei=SJhqUqDsM4reiAKor4HIBA&
id=zXoLAAAAIAAJ#v=onepage&q=couscous&f=false
Jim Chevallier
Date: Fri, 25 Oct 2013 13:31:45 -0400
From: Johnna Holloway <johnnae at mac.com>
To: Cooks within the SCA <sca-cooks at lists.ansteorra.org>
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] couscous was Serving stuff over rice
Rice and Couscous are lumped together under
"Kinds of Starch Dishes: Couscous, Rice, Meat Porridges (Harisas), Noodles and the Like" in An Anonymous Andalusian Cookbook of the 13th Century Translated by Charles Perry.
Recipes there include:
Soldiers' Couscous (Kuskus? Fity?ni)
The usual moistened couscous is known by the whole world. The fity?ni is the one where the meat is cooked with its vegetables, as is usual, and when it is done, take out the meat and the vegetables from the pot and put them to one side; strain the bones and the rest from the broth and return the pot to the fire; when it has boiled, put in the couscous cooked and rubbed with fat[145] and leave it for a little [p. 57, verso -- HM actually says p. 57, recto here] on a reduced fire or the hearthstone until it takes in the proper amount of the sauce; then throw it on a platter and level it, put on top of it the cooked meat and vegetables, sprinkle it with cinnamon and serve it. This is called Fity?ni[146] in Marrakesh.
I Have Seen a Couscous Made with Crumbs of the Finest White Bread.
For this one you take crumbs and rub with the palm on the platter, as one rubs the soup [hasu; unless this is a scribal error for hashu, "filling"], and let the bread be neither cold nor very hot; put it in a pierced pot [the colander-like perforated top portion of a couscousiere or couscous steamer] and when it's steam has left, throw it on the platter and rub with fat or moisten with the broth of the meat prepared for it. I have also seen a couscous that one makes from a fat chicken or stuffed and fattened capons and it was as if it were moistened only with fat, and in it were turnips of Toledo and "cow's eyes."
http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Medieval/Cookbooks/Andalusian/andalusian8.htm#Heading376
Johnnae
Date: Fri, 25 Oct 2013 13:57:51 -0400 (EDT)
From: JIMCHEVAL at aol.com
To: sca-cooks at lists.ansteorra.org
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] couscous was Serving stuff over rice
<<< From this and later references, my impression is that "couscous" was once a term much like "porridge" or "gruel", referring to any grain or starch
preparation, with the key difference that it was steamed rather than boiled. >>>
The later references I cited mainly refer to millet; when I was in
Cameroon, a hunter in the forest gave me cooked manioc which as I recall he also called 'couscous'. (Hardly bland, though, since they flavor everything there with hot sauce.)
Jim Chevallier
From the fb "SCA Cooks" group:
Urtatim Al-Qurtubiyya
7/13/17
Galefridus, there are *seven* recipes for couscous in the Fadalat al-Khiwan - one is for how to make the couscous itself, the others are for recipes using it.
1. Preparation of couscous
Take good semolina which is put in a bowl, moisten it with water in which a little salt has been dissolved. Roll the semolina with the tips of the fingers to incorporate it well [i assume it means incorporate the water with the semolina], and gently rub it between the palms of the hands until the semolina becomes the size of ants' heads. Then pass it on a fine sieve in order to free it of any flour, and store it, aerated and covered.
Urtatim Al-Qurtubiyya
Section One, Chapter Five, first recipe
Urtatim Al-Qurtubiyya
I have at least partially translated all of them, but I need to read them over to make sure they're done decently. Manuela Marín has a long footnote about couscous which I haven't translated yet but it appears to address some of its history.
Galefridus Peregrinus
That first recipe is the one I've studied in the greatest depth. It and all of the rest of Ibn Razin's couscous recipes are also available in English in Lilia Zaouali's book, which is a translation from Arabic to Italian to English. I'm not totally happy with using a translation of a translation, but I have both the Arabic edition and Manuela Marin's translation into Spanish for comparison.
Urtatim Al-Qurtubiyya
July 12 at 10:08am
Galefridus, there are *seven* recipes for couscous in the Fadalat al-Khiwan - one is for how to make the couscous itself, the others are for recipes using it.
1. Preparation of couscous
Take good semolina which is put in a bowl, moisten it with water in which a little salt has been dissolved. Roll the semolina with the tips of the fingers to incorporate it well [i assume it means incorporate the water with the semolina], and gently rub it between the palms of the hands until the semolina becomes the size of ants' heads. Then pass it on a fine sieve in order to free it of any flour, and store it, aerated and covered.
Urtatim Al-Qurtubiyya Section One, Chapter Five, first recipe
July 12 at 10:11am
Urtatim Al-Qurtubiyya
I have at least partially translated all of them, but I need to read them over to make sure they're done decently. Manuela Marín has a long footnote about couscous which I haven't translated yet but it appears to address some of its history.
July 12 at 10:14am
Galefridus Peregrinus
That first recipe is the one I've studied in the greatest depth. It and all of the rest of Ibn Razin's couscous recipes are also available in English in Lilia Zaouali's book, which is a translation from Arabic to Italian to English. I'm not totally happy with using a translation of a translation, but I have both the Arabic edition and Manuela Marin's translation into Spanish for comparison.
July 12 at 6:15pm
Urtatim Al-Qurtubiyya
Actually Zaouali didn't include all of them in her book. There's a version with fava beans she skipped.
<the end>