At this time of year, our thoughts turn to Christmas
foods – particularly to sweets and confections. A search of the use of the term
‘sweetmeat’ in the AND2 (one can search the translations or glosses in the
dictionary from the homepage) shows that an international array of sugary goods
was available in medieval England. For those unfamiliar with the English term, sweetmeat
is used to describe any kind of confectionary – candied fruit, nuts etc. –
nothing ‘meaty’ involved despite the name – ‘meat’ is used here in the original
sense of ‘food’ and not ‘flesh’. This should not be confused with the similar
sounding sweetbread
– which is definitely neither sweet nor bread! Even the OED can’t explain that
one!
Confection
was the general term used in Anglo-Norman for any compound preparation – a
mixture which included a number of ingredients. It was also used as a term for
preserves, a mixture of fruit and sugar. From the Latin confectio, the word is attested in Middle English from the
end of the fourteenth century (MED confeccioun;
OED confection).
While Godefroy (confection 2, 231a)
suggests a gloss of ‘confiture’ for some 16th-century attestations
of the word, other Medieval French dictionaries suggest the term was used for
mixtures, particularly pharmacological mixtures to which honey or syrup had
been added (FEW confection
2/ii,1029b; TL confeccïon; DMF confection;
TLF confection).
In the AND2, the citations illustrating this sense of ‘preserve, sweetmeat’ are
all taken from late sources: two citation from the account rolls of the Abbey
of Durham dating from about 1383 - 1403(and in a Latin context) and a citation
from the Southampton Port Books from the early fifteenth century. You will note
that Durham and Port Books are frequently our only source for this type of word. While
the Port Books record all the imports
into Southampton between 1427 and 1430, the Durham
accounts record all the expenditures of the abbey between the thirteenth and
fifteenth centuries.
Related to confection,
confit is derived from the past
participle of the Latin conficere
and listed in the AND as a past participle used as adjective sub confire2
meaning ‘preserved’. Again the attestations for its usage are mainly drawn from
Durham and Port Books with the earliest attestation listed dating to about
1370. The term comfit (the -mf-
spelling particular to English, and also found in the Anglo-Norman variants comfeth and comfyt) is attested in Middle English from 1425 in the sense of
‘sweetmeat made of fruit preserved with sugar’ (MED confit,
n.; OED comfit,
n). The term is equally attested in Old French as confit (FEW conficere 2/ii,1021b; Gdf 2,234b; TL confit; DMF confit
(note that this article erroneously linls to AND2’s conflict rather than confire2)
) and also confite (Gdf 2,234b; DMF confite)
with some hesitation about the gender of the word.
Dragee
is defined in the AND2 as a ‘spice, sweet meat, though also a type of pill, or
a sweet medicinal preparation’. The earliest citation of dragee
in the OED is from 1853, though in the forms found under dredge,
n.2 the word is attested from 1350,
glossed as ‘a sweetmeat or comfit containing a seed or grain of spice’. (See
also MED dragge
n.2). The OED suggests a derivation from the Greek τραγήματα meaning ‘spices,
condiments’ which became tragema
in Medieval Latin (the DMLBS defines this as ‘fruit and nuts eaten as dessert’ with
one attestation: tagimata sunt frustus dulces habentest dures nucleos, ut uve
vel nuces’ Alphita 182).
The
term is also attested in Old French(FEW tragema
13/ii 158; TL dragiee; DMF dragie1; dragée; GDF dragie1 2,766a (where both attestations are for the locution male
dragie,
‘mauvais accord’); GdfC dragie
9,413c; TLF dragée1. The word continues to be used in both French and English, though the
modern definition of the term is that of ‘a nut with a candied (sugarpaned) coating’.
This type of candy is often given at weddings in North America (known as Jordan
almonds),
or after a birth in most of Flanders (known in Dutch as suikerboon (‘sugar bean’ and also popularly
known as ‘baby poo’) .The term is also currently used in English to describe
small metallic balls used in cake or cookie decoration.
The word gobet is normally used
in Anglo-Norman as well as in Middle English and Old French to mean ‘a
mouthful’ (FEW *gobbo 4,179b; TL gobet1; Gdf gobet2 4,298b;
DEAF gobe G921; DMF gobet;
TLF gobet;
OED gobbet
n.) However, in this entry, we can also find the locution gobet real, defined as a ‘kind of sweetmeat’ and
illustrated by two citations:
cofyns de anys confyt
et gobetes reale Durham 126
Item in ij. libris de
gingeur confecto ij. libris de annys confecto ij. libris de gobet rial ij.
libris de gariofil ij. libris de zucre en plate GAUNT1 ii 270
This usage is unattested elsewhere
except in the MED where the use of gobet real is noted with the gloss ‘royal tidbit, a delicacy made of spices and
sugar’.
The word madrian,
glossed simply as ‘a sweetmeat’ is only found in one attestation in a Latin
context (again from Durham – those
monks enjoyed their sweets!):
In diversis speciebus
[…] videlicet gobet reall, anys comfett et madryam Durham 560
It is attested in
English between 1350 and 1500 at which point it seems to disappear (OED madrian, n.; MED madrian, n.) It is much more frequently attested in Old
French (FEW o.i. 21,139a; TL madrïan;
Gdf madrian 5,64b; DMF madrian) where,
again, there are no attestations of the word after 1500. The OED is unsure of
the etymology of word, but notes the use of madria
in Latin (1329 DMBLS 1676b) and the Italian form madria, ‘a type of ginger’, in 1343.
In the entry sukade
in the AND2 we find the following citation, glosses as ‘succade, sweetmeat’:
.ix. barels de sukade,
valor .xl. s. Port Bks 109
This attestation dating
from about 1430, appears to be the earliest attestation of the word, though the
FEW (sukkar 19,162a) notes the use
of sucrades in the 15th century and the DMF has an attestation from the end of
the 15th century of the form chucade in
the entry for succade. Godefroy also lists several citations using the
word, but these are all later in date than our Anglo-Norman citation (Gdf succade 7,586a). The DMBLS suggests an
Anglo-Norman source for their sole attestation of succada which dates to 1570. The term entered English in the forms succade n., succate n.. and sucket n., all with the definition of ‘fruit preserved in
sugar’, with the earliest citation from 1463 but the etymology of the word
remains unclear. The OED notes the presence of sukade in Dutch and the form succatum
in a 15th-century Latin text, but nothing earlier than our
Anglo-Norman attestation. However, our graduate student, Megan Tiddeman, has
recently noted the presence of a similar form in an Italian (Tuscan) document,
dating from the 14th century, so it is very possible that the word is in fact
an Italian borrowing. Megan is going to give us some more insights on the
development of this word and other words related to sugar in Italian and
Anglo-Norman in a future Word of the Month.
Merry/Happy Christmas
from the AND – have a wonderful holiday and don’t indulge in too many sweets!
(HP)
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