Ceviche

On Fri, 16 May 2008 13:20:38 +0100, Lazarus Cooke
wrote:

wrote:

Interesting. I don't see how ceviche (sah/suh-vee-che/chee) could have
come from escabeche (s-kaa-beash) other than via written form (as
opposed to via common speech).

I disagree there. Words change a lot in oral transmission.

That alone makes me have some question
as to the connection. I've heard it (ceviche) was a native Americas
dish and term, but not from linguistic experts - sometimes, however,
laypeople know a hell of a lot more than experts, and often, even if
they are a bit fuzzy on details, the kernel of the facts are correct.
I'd offer that the word "siwichi" makes more sense in practical terms,
but ???

As I remember it, Alan Davidson, editor of 'Petits Propos Culinaires',
argued the derivation from the Latin in his 'Oxford Companion to Food'.

The SF writer Paula Wolfert then took some exceptions to this and a
number of other points of Davidson's in an article in 'Food and
Foodways' some years ago (I don't have access to these at the moment -
they're not online and I'm at home and writing from memory and notes).

Wolfert wrote :

"This" (Davidson's etymology) "is incorrect. Ceviche or seviche is
nothing but a Mediterranean method of preserving raw fish. The Latin
American Spanish word seviche or ceviche comes from the Iberian Spanish
escabeche, also called schebbeci in Sicily, a word that means
³marinated fish.²"


The Peruvian derivation from escabeche de cebolla comes from a
discussion some years ago with Victor de la Serna, who edits the wine
column for El Mundo

http://elmundovino.elmundo.es/elmundovino/

-- de la Serna was only saying that the etymology was the subject of
much heated discussion in Peru, and that this was one possible
derivation.

I agree that the Quecha derivation ( which I think came from a fairly
unauthratative source)is appealing , but that doesn't mean it's true!
There's often a great sentimental nationalistic interest in claiming
native derivations.

I'm not Peruvian or Quechuan, and I have no national interest in the
matter. I do not _know_ where "ceviche" came from, and apparently, the
issue is up for debate, but based on what I do know, I'll stick with a
native word as the origin as most likely until something concrete shows
up. I will disagree strongly with Wolfert as an "expert" - ceviche, as
I know it (and as most of the Americas knows it) is by no means a method
of preserving fish, Mediterranean or otherwise. I would not eat ceviche
that had been around a week at room temp...YKMV...how many kilometers is
it to the nearest hospital for you...?

Ah well. Time for lunch. It's Friday, and I was going to get some
sardines from the fishmonger in Brixton, but now you've put me off....

Good Appetite

Lazarus

TC,
R