Galangal, galingale (galinga)
Tim Langevin
There appears to be some confusion about galingale and galangal.
According to the American Heritage Dictionary, these are the roots
of two unrelated species, one Asian (galangal, Alpinia officinarum)
and one European (galingale, Cyperus longus). Galangal was probably
named by Europeans who were familiar with galingale and found it
similar. I found no reference to galinga. I have seen (and made)
Thai recipes that use galangal (and also referred to it as kah), but
have never seen (though it doesn't prove much, I know...) a Thai
recipe call for galingale.
How interchangeable they are in recipes, I can not say...
As to what Elizabethans used galingale for, I also can't say,
although perhaps that made a 15th century style Lamprey Sauce...
Tim Langevin
kl...@iscsvax.uni.edu
>
> There appears to be some confusion about galingale and galangal.
> According to the American Heritage Dictionary, these are the roots
> of two unrelated species, one Asian (galangal, Alpinia officinarum)
> and one European (galingale, Cyperus longus). Galangal was probably
> How interchangeable they are in recipes, I can not say...
Not very. Alpinia has a gingery bite to it, while Cyperus rhizomes
taste like dirty potato to me.
Kay Klier Biology Dept UNI
Terry Nutter
> There appears to be some confusion about galingale and galangal.
> According to the American Heritage Dictionary, these are the roots
> of two unrelated species, one Asian (galangal, Alpinia officinarum)
> and one European (galingale, Cyperus longus). Galangal was probably
> named by Europeans who were familiar with galingale and found it
> similar. I found no reference to galinga. I have seen (and made)
> Thai recipes that use galangal (and also referred to it as kah), but
> have never seen (though it doesn't prove much, I know...) a Thai
> recipe call for galingale.
The OED gives a different account. It explicitly treats all spellings as
the same word, and refers to a single main entry under "galingale". This
is more consistent with the spelling variations I find in 14th and 15th
C English and French recipes than the AHD treatment. Under that entry,
the OED lists two meanings:
1. The aromatic root of certain East Indian plants of the
genera _Alpina_ and _Kampferia_, formerly much used in medecine
and cookery.
[bunches of refs omitted]
b. A dish seasoned with galingale.
[more refs]
2. Applied to an English species of sedge, _Cyperus longus_,
sometimes distinguished as 'English galingale', the root of
which has similar properties to those of the true galingale.
[more refs]
I have almost a pound of what you get from Frontier Herbs if you special
order "galingale". It's the stuff that tastes like ginger that grew up,
went to college, got sophisticated, and decided to go for a Ph.D. So
if you order galingale (under that name) from Frontier, at any rate, you
will get the good stuff.
-- I think it's the AHD that's confused. It works from US source material
primarily, and neither root has ever been much used here.
> How interchangeable they are in recipes, I can not say...
Nor can I; but judging from the naming, my guess is that "English galingale"
is at least a half-way decent substitute, as it was named in a time and place
where galingale was widely used. (Then again, Kay Klier had a bad experience
with it. Then again, maybe she had a bad sample? I got some lousy ginger
root once....)
> As to what Elizabethans used galingale for, I also can't say,
> although perhaps that made a 15th century style Lamprey Sauce...
This is pre-Elizabethan. One of the most common sauces of the 14th and 15th
centuries was galentine (galantine, galintine, galantyn, etc.); virtually
every English and French cookbook has at least one recipe for it. In this
period, the primary (sometimes the only) spice is galingale. -- Galantine
sauces survive today in French cuisine, but the galingale has been replaced
by ginger, to the severe damage of the sauce, at least in my opinion (and
I love ginger). By the way, the same traditions _did_ have distinguished
ginger sauces -- jances -- and used them differently. I've also found
galingale used in bruets (sourt of medieval stew-like dishes), sweets,
other sauces, and so on; not as common as ginger, but used in much the same
way.
I'll run through my Hugh Platt and see what I find for Elizabethans.
Cheers,
Terry Nutter Blacksburg, VA j...@vtopus.cs.vt.edu (703)552-1598
Pat.Ch...@bbs.actrix.gen.nz
> Hi. Tim Langevin wrote,
>
> > There appears to be some confusion about galingale and galangal.
>
> The OED gives a different account. It explicitly treats all spellings as
> the same word, and refers to a single main entry under "galingale". This
> is more consistent with the spelling variations I find in 14th and 15th
> C English and French recipes than the AHD treatment. Under that entry,
> the OED lists two meanings:
>
> 1. The aromatic root of certain East Indian plants of the
> genera _Alpina_ and _Kampferia_, formerly much used in medecine
> and cookery.
> [bunches of refs omitted]
> b. A dish seasoned with galingale.
> [more refs]
> 2. Applied to an English species of sedge, _Cyperus longus_,
> sometimes distinguished as 'English galingale', the root of
> which has similar properties to those of the true galingale.
> [more refs]
>
> > As to what Elizabethans used galingale for, I also can't say,
> > although perhaps that made a 15th century style Lamprey Sauce...
>
> This is pre-Elizabethan. One of the most common sauces of the 14th and 15th
> centuries was galentine (galantine, galintine, galantyn, etc.); virtually
> every English and French cookbook has at least one recipe for it. In this
> period, the primary (sometimes the only) spice is galingale. -- Galantine
> sauces survive today in French cuisine, but the galingale has been replaced
> by ginger, to the severe damage of the sauce, at least in my opinion (and
> I love ginger). By the way, the same traditions _did_ have distinguished
> ginger sauces -- jances -- and used them differently. I've also found
> galingale used in bruets (sourt of medieval stew-like dishes), sweets,
> other sauces, and so on; not as common as ginger, but used in much the same
> way.
>
> I'll run through my Hugh Platt and see what I find for Elizabethans.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Terry Nutter Blacksburg, VA j...@vtopus.cs.vt.edu (703)552-1598
In *Exotic Fruits and Vegetables*, authors Jane Grigson and Charlotte
Knox deal with Galangal (alpinia galanga) and say:
On account of medieval recipes I would suspect that the words
galantine and galangal are confused in the inquiring cook's mind.
Galangal was used to flavour a galantine sauce which consisted of
bread crusts, a little galangal, cinnamon and ginger, pounded up and
moistened with an appropriate stock. This was heated, sharpened with
a splash of vinegar and strained over fish or meat, a dashing lively
sauce, a galant sauce:
Was never a pike wallowed in galantine
As I in love am wallowed and y-wound
as Chaucer wrote around about AD1384.
RThe word galangal came via Persia and the Arabic khalanjan from the
Chinese Ko-liang-kiang, meaning no more than mild ginger from Ko, a
prefecture in the province of Canton. Europe seems to have stopped
using galangal with the development of simpler cooking, or rather
simpler flavouring, in the Renaissance. I doubt it appears at all in
the 17th century cookbooks that set our moder style.
Quote ends...
It's rather interesting, isn't it?
--
| The floggings will continue until morale improves
| Pat.Ch...@bbs.actrix.gen.nz (Pat Churchill, Wellington, New Zealand)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Skip Watson
j...@nutter.cs.vt.edu (Terry Nutter) writes:
-> Hi. Tim Langevin wrote,
->
-> > There appears to be some confusion about galingale and galangal.
-> > According to the American Heritage Dictionary, these are the roots
-> > of two unrelated species, one Asian (galangal, Alpinia officinarum)
-> > and one European (galingale, Cyperus longus). Galangal was probably
-> > named by Europeans who were familiar with galingale and found it
-> > similar. I found no reference to galinga. I have seen (and made)
-> > Thai recipes that use galangal (and also referred to it as kah), but
-> > have never seen (though it doesn't prove much, I know...) a Thai
-> > recipe call for galingale.
->
-> The OED gives a different account. It explicitly treats all spellings as
-> the same word, and refers to a single main entry under "galingale". This
-> is more consistent with the spelling variations I find in 14th and 15th
-> C English and French recipes than the AHD treatment. Under that entry,
-> the OED lists two meanings:
->
-> 1. The aromatic root of certain East Indian plants of the
-> genera _Alpina_ and _Kampferia_, formerly much used in medecine
-> and cookery.
-> [bunches of refs omitted]
-> b. A dish seasoned with galingale.
-> [more refs]
-> 2. Applied to an English species of sedge, _Cyperus longus_,
-> sometimes distinguished as 'English galingale', the root of
-> which has similar properties to those of the true galingale.
-> [more refs]
From The Herbal by John Gerard, 1597, we find several references to
galingale.
Chap 24. Of English Galingale
Cyperus longus English Galingale
Cyperus rotundus vulgaris Round Galingale
Cyperus rotundus littoreous Round Salt-marsh Cyperus
Chap 25. Of Italian Trafi, or Spanish Galingale
Cyperus esculentus
Chap 26. Of the true Galingale, the greater and lesser
(The ones we're interested in)
Galanga major The greater Galingale
The great Galingale, whose root only is in use, and brought to us
from Iava (Java) in the East Indies, hath flaggy leaves some two cubits high,
like these of Cats-taile or Reed-mace: the root is thick and knotty,
resembling those of our ordinary flagges, but that they are of a more
whitish color on the inside, and not too large. Their taste is very hot
and biting, and they are somwhat reddish on the outside
Galanga minor The lesser Galingale
The lesser growing in China, and commonly in shops called
Galingale, without any addition, is a small root of a brownish red colour
both within and without; the taste is hot and biting, the smell
aromaticall, the leaves are like those of Myrtles.
Does anyone know when the name changed from galanga minor to
alpinia galanga/officinalis?
Galanga can be found in most Chinese supply shops in dried sliced
form.
The galingale from Frontier is alpinia galanga rather than the
alpinia officinalis that everyone else seems to have. Is there any
difference between these two or are they different names for the same
plant.
Skip
---
Internet: cia...@aldhfn.akron.oh.us UUCP: cia...@aldhfn.UUCP
Auldhaefen / World's End BBSes 216 753-8791 (v.32bis)
Auldhaefen Associates Email: auldh...@aldhfn.akron.oh.us
SCA supplies (herbs, spices, pigments) pricelist available via e-mail
Terry Nutter
now, for bandwidth, and anyhow, if you were interested, you'd have
read it then ;^), and wrote,
>In *Exotic Fruits and Vegetables*, authors Jane Grigson and Charlotte
>Knox deal with Galangal (alpinia galanga) and say:
>On account of medieval recipes I would suspect that the words
>galantine and galangal are confused in the inquiring cook's mind.
>Galangal was used to flavour a galantine sauce which consisted of
>bread crusts, a little galangal, cinnamon and ginger, pounded up and
>moistened with an appropriate stock. This was heated, sharpened with
>a splash of vinegar and strained over fish or meat, a dashing lively
>sauce, a galant sauce:
> Was never a pike wallowed in galantine
> As I in love am wallowed and y-wound
>as Chaucer wrote around about AD1384.
>RThe word galangal came via Persia and the Arabic khalanjan from the
>Chinese Ko-liang-kiang, meaning no more than mild ginger from Ko, a
>prefecture in the province of Canton. Europe seems to have stopped
>using galangal with the development of simpler cooking, or rather
>simpler flavouring, in the Renaissance. I doubt it appears at all in
>the 17th century cookbooks that set our moder style.
You know, I believed something close to this until last night. (In
particular, I didn't think it was simpler flavoring -- 15th C sauces
are _more_ complex than 14th, and 16th and 17th in general at least as
complex as 15th, at least in my experience. Rather I thought galingale
lost to a combination of the difficulty of working it and the ease of
substituting the easier and cheaper alternative, ginger. Still....)
Then I decided to write a simple article for an amateur outlet on looking
at how recipes varried in the Middle Ages, and thought to use galentyne
sauce as an example of recipe evolution (bad choice, it turns out at
least for a _simple_ article!) and did some far more systematic digging
through my books than I had before. The results are rather startling.
I found 23 English recipes from the 14th and 15th C that use "galentine"
in the name, or that use that term internally to describe the sauce (and
there may be more in the latter category). (I also found a couple of
French ones, but the English situation is more than complex enough by
itself!) Of these, the majority do not call for _either_ galingale _or_
ginger.
I'm trying to work out what's going on now. I haven't finished, but
I can give some generalizations. Of the recipes I found, 9 came from
three 14th C MS sources, and the remaining 14 come from six 15th C
MS sources. Some of these have "covert" ingredients (some say things
like "seeth your fish in a good sauce"; a couple say "a galentyne made
of" and list some ingredients that may not be exhaustive; one says to
add "powder"; etc.). Eliminating these, I find the following trends
(citing from memory; the numbers are all up on another, currently
inaccessible program):
(1) Only one recipe for Fillets in Galentine (a pork dish; galentine
seem otherwise to have been used primarily with fish) from either
century calls for galingale. Most of these call for no spice in the
modern sense at all except pepper and in one case saunders for color.
(2) Most of the recipes for galentine other than fillets in the 14th
C call for galingale. Some of these also call for ginger, and less
than half call for cinnamon. None calls for cinnamon or ginger or
both but not galingale.
(3) Of the 15th C recipes, almost all call for cinnamon (90%). Only
20% call for galingale.
The one clear trend is that in the 15th C, cinnamon replaces galingale.
This does _not_ represent a reduction in the amount of total spice in
the dish, or in the number of spices used; it's a change of which spice
is used, and an _increase_ in overall spicing. This may be because with
larger amounts used, they preferred a cheaper and easier spice; though
in that case, it isn't clear why they didn't go toward ginger. (The total
percent of 15th C recipes that call for either ginger or galingale is
substantially lower than the percent that call for galingale in the 14th.)
I am currently looking at trying to find evidence for the following
hypothesis. In the 13th C Anglo-Norman cuisine, there were (among
others) two popular sauces: galentine, based on galingale, and cameline,
based on cinnamon (called cannel). Other than the base spice, the
difference between the sauces was primarily that cameline was sweet and
bland, where galentine was sour and piquant.
With pork, they preferred a sour and piquant sauce, like the galentine
base (this is true of porc sauces in general, so far as I have been able
to determine -- I'm going to look some more!), so preferred galentine
to cameline, but they didn't like the galingale with the pork. So by
the 14th C, galentine has divided into two sauces: one with pork and
generally without galingale, and one with fish and generally with
galingale.
Then in the 15th C, there is a separate move to replace galingale by
cinnamon.
I'm going to try to go through my cookbooks and count recipes that call
for various spices, and see if I can show a shift in the ratios overall
that supports this. MEANWHILE -- if any of you out there have information
that I am covering old ground, PLEASE let me know! I'd rather look this
up than do it ;^}.
And I'm going to use cameline instead for the article I was planning.
This is too long. Will stop now.
Charlie Sorsby
I've just begun reading this group but have had a nagging interest
in the subject matter in the back of my mind for a long time now...
As the subject says, I'm looking for references. Can some of you
post (or if this is a faq--email) a list of references (at least
some of which someone with limited access and resources may have
some hope of finding and at least some of which are of an
introductory but accurate nature)? Cookbooks as well as
histories?
Is there a faq for this news group and, if so, where may it be
obtained?
Please resume your regularly scheduled discussion now and please
pardon the interruption... :)
--
Best,
Charlie "Older than dirt" Sorsby "I'm the NRA!"
c...@lanl.gov
Terry Nutter
do you want? Books about the history of food, or old cookbooks? Books
with talk about food, or books with historical recipes, or books with
modern versions of historical recipes? From what times and places?
You really don't want even all the _introductory_ stuff people will
send you without answers to these.... /8^}
Having said which, Reay Tannahill's _Food in History_ does come to mind....