Tasty trivia

[muckefuck]

In a list of Turkish dishes, I came across the word kavurma which apparently means "cubed browned lamb". It looked suspiciously close to korma, the name for a saucy North Indian dish, so I naturally wondered if they were related. Yup! The OED traces them both back to an older Turkish qawurma from the verb qawurmak "roast, bake". Furthermore, there seems to be another cognate in the name of the Persian dish ghormeh (Turkic/Arabic /q/ regularly becomes /G/ in Modern Persian), a kind of lamb stew.

I haven't been this excited since I figured out that Armenian basturma and Yiddish pastrame must be distant cousins. (Again, the connexion is Turkish: Ottoman baSdirma, of uncertain origin; the modern form is pastırma.) It's both thrilling and dispiriting to find these cognates. On the one hand, I love uncovering cultural interpentration; on the other, it makes the individual cuisines seem somewhat less special when you realise how much they've borrowed from their neighbours.

Comments

[snowy-owlet.livejournal.com]

KAZANDIBI

[nitouche.livejournal.com]

I always figured that basturma & pastrami had to be cognate; too big a coincidence otherwise. I didn't know about pastirma until I went to Turkey 2 years ago, and was thrilled to find it; it's pretty much identical to the Armenian version. Luckily Peter & I *both* like it -- my father used to be exiled from the marital bedroom after eating it!

[foodpoisoningsf.livejournal.com]

So what about cognate and Cognac?

[electrikalstorm.livejournal.com]

All I know is that they're all delicious here! =)

[padpedpladuk.livejournal.com]

Like showarma with the Swedish k->sh !

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

This post did make me curious about the origins of shawerma. It looks like it should also be from a Turkish word, but there's no obvious etymon. The Turkish version of the dish is called döner kebap.

döner cognate

[padpedpladuk.livejournal.com]

[wiped.livejournal.com]

ghormeh sabzi is actually an azeri dish that became popular throughout iran, so it makes sense that its name (at least the "ghormeh" part) would be turkic. if you're wondering why i'm commenting on an entry of yours from 2005, i was looking through your "türkçe" tag to find an entry you wrote about "ince memed," which i'm currently reading.