On Wed, Jul 8, 2009 at 8:45 PM, Heather Rose
Jones<heather.jones@...> wrote:
>
> On Jul 8, 2009, at 4:11 AM, bronwynmgn@... wrote:
>
>> In a message dated 7/7/2009 10:51:40 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
>> tatsushu@... writes:
>>
>> <<For food I often look at post-cutoff sources, but I analyze them
>> critically based on earlier evidence. If you find a 1640 recipe for a
>> food that is mentioned (but not otherwise described) in 1590, then
>> would it not be reasonable to assume that they are the same, barring
>> contrary evidence?>>
>>
>> Similar yes, but quite possibly not the same. After all, we have
>> lots of
>> contemporary manuscripts which list a recipe of the same name in
>> each, but
>> the recipes themselves can be anything from slight variations of
>> each other to
>> completely different. We also have evidence that a dish can be
>> listed by
>> the same name in an earlier and a later source and have evolved
>> significantly
>> in between. So assuming that a dish named Bukenade in one source
>> and a
>> dish named Bukenade in another source are the same dish is a faulty
>> premise.
>>
>
> My favorite example of this problem is how to interpret the Welsh
> clothing term "pais". The word shows up as a description of a specific
> garment continuously from the earliest written sources (the Book of
> Aneurin) to the present day. But the specific nature of the garment
> being referred to changes enormously over that time. Even if you had a
> picture of a garment in century X with an arrow pointing to it saying
> "this is a 'pais'", that wouldn't tell you what the word referred to
> in century X-1 or X+1.

All true, but then again, this is where we get into the "reasonable
attempt"--we get as close as we can justify to the truth of the
matter, and don't ever try to adjudicate things in a vacuum.

-E. G. Logan