Rhubarb

(music)

Liz: Hello and welcome to Bread and Thread, a podcast about food and domestic history. I’m Liz

Hazel: And I’m Hazel. We are two friends who studied archaeology together and love history, and making things that are from history, and we like to start the episode by talking about what we have been making and/or baking recently, so what have you been up to?

Liz: Tragedy has befallen me

Hazel: Oh gosh

Liz: I got RSI in my elbow, so I had to take some time off from crafting

Hazel: Oh, my commiserations, that’s horrible

Liz: It was right after I bought some really cool sock yarn as well

Hazel: No! That is

Liz: ‘Cause there’s a new craft shop near my parents’ house, and they have this sock yearn that’s full-on 80s neon, so I’ve basically, I’ve turned the heel, and now it’s just sitting there mocking me

Hazel: Oh, that is a crafter’s worst nightmare. I’m sorry

Liz: So I’m sat here with kinesiology tape on my elbow like I’m a wrestler or something, and it’s just, no, I knitted too much

Hazel: Just tell people you are a wrestler

Liz: They can’t prove I’m not

Hazel: Exactly. Not if you have a secret wrestling alter ego

Liz: I know the location of a nearby amateur wrestling thing, so I could probably stall them for a bit

Hazel: (laughs) Nick’s just messaged in the discord “Bread and Threat”, which I enjoy

Liz: That’s it, that’s my wrestling name. We do have brewing news though, the honey beer is ready for bottling

Hazel: Ooh, have you tried it yet?

Nick: No

Liz: Not yet, ‘cause it still needs to age for a little bit

Hazel: Oh ok

Liz: But it smells really good

Hazel: I’m imagining the smell is good

Liz: ‘Cause it’s not got the barley in, it’s basically hoppy mead

Hazel: Ok. Interesting

Liz: So it’s got this really light, almost floral smell to it

Hazel: Hmm

Liz: But still definitely a beer smell

Hazel: Yeah, I’m imagining that would be a really interesting taste with the sweet mead flavour and the sour, hoppyness. Mmm

Liz: It’ll be a good summer beer I think

Hazel: Yeah

Liz: And once it’s aged it’ll be mid-April, so

Hazel: That sounds refreshing. Ok

Liz: What have you been up to?

Hazel: Gonna come try that this summer, hopefully

Liz: Yes. Yes come, come and try the beer

Hazel: (laughs) I have been on a bit of a knitting kick. I finished my crochet butterfly, it’s adorable, I’ll put a picture of it on the twitter, but it’s very cute

Liz: It’s really cute, you put a picture in the patreon discord, it’s adorable

Hazel: Yeah. It’s got a chrysalis that goes with it, and an egg as well, so it’s the whole lifecycle. Very cute, it’s got the little eyes and (laughs) So that was fun (laughs) and I might have started a lace shawl, ‘cause I need that along with everything else I’m trying to get done

Liz: The thing with other knitting projects is they’re too easy

Hazel: I know! You need a sort of easy, mindless comfort project that you can do while watching TV, and you need a medium one, and then you need the hard project, for when you wanna be totally absorbed in something

Liz: Exactly

Hazel: It’s the categories. But it was yarn I already had and was…I tried to make a thing but it didn’t work out, so I put it away for a year, as you do, and now I’m making a different thing, and it is working out very nicely so far, and that’s fun, but it’s cobweb weight, and it’s the first time I’ve used yarn that thin. I know you’re familiar with cobweb

Liz: Yeah, my wedding ring shawl was, I mean it has to be cobweb weight

Hazel: Yeah

Liz: It’s very delicate

Hazel: It is

Liz: I wish you the best of luck

Hazel: Thank you. I’ve had a couple problems with it snapping already, but I think that’s because I used one of those yarn winders that you…what’s the word for when you…I’m doing the motion with my arm now, when you manually

Liz: Ball it?

Hazel: Sorry?

Liz: Balling?

Hazel: You crank something, that’s the word. The ones where you turn the crank and it, yeah, turns out that is a bit much for cobweb weight yarn and it got tangled and snapped

Liz: Oh, is it too much tension?

Hazel: Yeah, but I think I’ve got past the bad bit, so it’s probably going to be smooth sailing from now on. It just took a while to get used to the delicateness, I guess. But yeah, super fun

Liz: Exciting

Hazel: Yeah

Liz: Also a good spring project

Hazel: Yes, definitely. So speaking of spring

Liz: Ooh

Hazel: I’m gonna talk about a spring vegetable, but one that is generally regarded as a fruit, which is rhubarb

Liz: Ah. I’ve never thought of it as a fruit

Hazel: I guess I thought of it as a fruit because what I know of it is all sweet items

Liz: Yeah, like pies and crumbles and pouring custard over it

Hazel: Yeah. But it’s actually a vegetable, but yeah, all the recipes I know are for sweet dishes. Although, as I’ll talk about later on, it has been used for quite a long time in the Middle East in savoury dishes as well

Liz: That makes sense, ‘cause there’s a lot more sweet/savoury crossover in the Middle East

Hazel: Yeah, lot more use of sour flavours and things. Rhubarb is actually a much more interesting vegetable than at first glance. It’s got a lot of different uses. You can use it medicine, food, dye. That’s actually the beginning of our story of rhubarb, is its use as medicine

Liz: Ok

Hazel: Yeah. Its classification, it’s the rheum family, and there’s a quite a few different varieties, there’s Rheum rhabarbarum, rapunticum, a few different ones of culinary rhubarb, and then there’s different varieties that are ornamental, and

Liz: Ornamental rhubarb?

Hazel: You can get ornamental rhubarbs, yeah

Liz: We’re gonna need a picture of that on the twitter

Hazel: I’ll try and find one, yep. The foliage is magnificent. Rhubarb seems to originate from the colder areas of Asia. It’s listed in a Chinese herbal compendium, the, ok, my terrible pronunciation, but it’s the Sheng-nung Pen-ts'ao Ching, or Sheng-nung’s Herbal Classics, which is an ancient Chinese book of medicinal plants and their uses, and how to grow them, which is generally dated to around 200 BC, at the earliest. It’s possibly listed in an earlier herbal compendium, which is dated at the earliest to 2700 BC

Liz: Wow

Hazel: Yep. But that one’s a little bit difficult to attribute, ‘cause the dating is disputed, but we definitely know about it from at least 200 BC, and it was used in traditional Chinese medicine to regulate the gut, so it could be used as a remedy for gut problems, and for constipation

Liz: Ok. I have heard of rhubarb being a “it keeps you regular” kind of thing

Hazel: (laughing) Ok, yeah, yeah

Liz: I think is the phrase that the old people use

Hazel: (laughs) That was its traditional use, and it was actually used for medicine in the west, as well, for that purpose. It was a big import along the Silk Road from Chines. But it is actually quite good for you, rhubarb, it’s got a lot of vitamin K, a lot of calcium

Liz: Oh nice

Hazel: Apparently it’s classed as a superfood, and the bit that’s eaten, the red part, is actually the leaf stem. So you don’t…the roots have been used in medicine. The leaves are poisonous, you cannot eat them

Liz: Good to know

Hazel: Apparently Thomas Jefferson recommended them cooked like spinach

Liz: We know he didn’t have the best judgement

Hazel: (laughs) Kind of sceptical about that one, yeah. But back to the ancient world. It was imported, by about the 10th century had become very popular as a medicine, it was imported along the Silk Road, and coming into the Middle East and to Europe. Apparently in mediaeval Europe it was more expensive than a lot of the spices, like nutmeg and pepper, because it was highly valued, and came from a long way away

Liz: That makes sense

Hazel: There are also reports of it being native to Siberia, and growing along the Volga River, as well, and the world rhubarb, the name rhubarb comes to us from early French, which came from, like a lot of things, Greek

Liz: Mm-hmm

Hazel: From the Greek rhubarbaron, which is like the word barbarian. Basically it means foreign rhubarb, foreign plant

Liz: Foreign plant?!

Hazel: Foreign plant!

Liz: The one foreign plant

Hazel: ‘Cause of course, according to the Greeks, anyone who didn’t speak Greek was a barbarian

Liz: Mm-hmm

Hazel: So it was literally barbarian plant (laughs)

Liz: That’s beautiful

Hazel: I know. Makes it sound a lot more fearsome than it is, I think

Liz: Hordes of marauding rhubarb

Hazel: (laughs) In fact, that actually ties into something that I’ll mention a bit later on

Liz: Ok?

Hazel: I’ve got a beautiful picture for you to use as the teaser for this episode

Liz: Ok

Hazel: You’re gonna love it. So are all of you guys listening, when you get to see it. Apparently, the word for rhubarb in Chinese translates to “the great yellow”, as well, which is really interesting because it is also used in dying, to produce yellow, in that sort of region as well. According to an embassy in the early 15th century to Samarkand, talking about the merchandise being imported from China, apparently the best of it included silk, satins, musk, rubies, diamonds, pearls, and rhubarb. So there you go, it was a pretty highly prized item. It also has a bit of a history in the Middle East, in the Islamic Middle East

Liz: Mm-hmm

Hazel: As well as Persia, and it actually features in a Zoroastrian creation story, that comes from some Zoroastrian texts. It’s a fantastic story. It’s basically, in its basic form, rhubarb is responsible for the first human couple

Liz: As an aphrodisiac, or?

Hazel: No, actually not this time

Liz: Ok

Hazel: I didn’t find anything about rhubarb being an aphrodisiac, for once

Liz: That must be the one long plant that isn’t an aphrodisiac

Hazel: Maybe so. I suppose a plant that’s known for making you regular isn’t that aphrodisiac sounding, really

Liz: On the other hand, if you’re bloated

Hazel: (laughs)

Liz: You’re not gonna be in the mood

Hazel: True, true. Guess you can make anything sound like an aphrodisiac. The story goes like this: the pre-human, as it were, who’s called Gayomard, and again, terrible pronunciation, dies as a result of the evil figure Ahriman, and, as he dies, he falls onto his left side, and he emits a fluid, and the suns rays gradually purify that fluid

Liz: Ok

Hazel: And it is cared for by two deities, and after 40 years a rhubarb plant grows from the substance, and growing from the rhubarb plant is the first human couple, Mashya and Mashyana, who are then animated into human beings

Liz: So they’re like a rhubarb fruit?

Hazel: I guess. That was

Liz: Sure

Hazel: That was a fun one that I found

Liz: As creation myths go, I think I quite enjoy that one

Hazel: Oh yeah, it is a great addition to…I didn’t know this one before, but yeah, it is a lot of fun. Apart from that, it was also used as a medicine in the Middle East and Persia, but it also has been used in cuisine, as we mentioned earlier. In the West, it’s kind of unheard of for rhubarb to be used in savoury dishes, but in Persian cuisine they use a lot more sour flavours. Since the Middle Ages, we know that’s been used, and I found one recipe which sounds absolutely delicious, and I think I’m gonna have to try it out. It’s called khoresh rivas, and it’s a lamb, herb, and rhubarb stew

Liz: Oh

Hazel: It’s with lamb or beef, and mint, parsley, rhubarb, and onion. It sounds absolutely delicious. Apparently in similar stews they would use dried lime, or something else sour, to give that sour taste, but if you put rhubarb in you don’t need to use any of that. The rhubarb will provide that tanginess without anything else

Liz: That’s cool. I’ve had a similar thing with pomegranate

Hazel: Ooh

Liz: Which I think is a fairly similar flavour profile, so I can see that working well

Hazel: Mmm. That sounds good, but I read this and my stomach immediately started rumbling, so

Liz: (laughs)

Hazel: I might have to give that a try. It was being used in savoury dishes, specifically for its sour flavour, but in Britain, while it was being used for its medicinal purposes, no-one really wanted to eat it, because we don’t like sour flavours as much, and rhubarb on its own is extremely sour, so we normally add sugar to it, and so it follows that we started eating it in northern Europe when sugar became a bit more available, in the late 18th/early 19th century, due to colonialism of course

Liz: Yep

Hazel: So many things hinge on that

Liz: See the sugar episode

Hazel: Oh yeah, go back to that one if you want to know more about that. It started to be grown in both Europe and America in the 18th century, and several culinary varieties were developed. The first recipe, the first known recipe, including rhubarb in Britain is from 1806, and it’s in a book called A New System of Domestic Cookery, by Maria Eliza Rundell, and it’s for a rhubarb tart, which sounds quite nice. It’s a pastry base, with rhubarb, and covered in a sugar syrup

Liz: That sound very nice, but also that book title, that’s so grandiose, I love it

Hazel: (laughs) I know. I don’t know very much about this book by itself, but I’ll look into it, see if it’s worth doing one of our book episodes on it. That sounds quite nice, and we’re starting to get…turns out if you put sugar with rhubarb, suddenly it has an amazing flavour, or at least it does if you want to put it in sweet dishes. From there we get what we know in the West as traditional rhubarb dishes: your tart, your compote, your crumbles. In America, apparently, it often gets paired with strawberry, in strawberry and rhubarb pie

Liz: I can see that, ‘cause strawberries are ridiculously sweet, so they’d mellow each other out

Hazel: Yeah, I can see that as a combination. Although apparently it is a little bit controversial with rhubarb purists

Liz: Rhubarb purists

Hazel: Apparently that is a thing. In fact it’s definitely a thing, as we will find out when we come to The Rhubarb Triangle

Liz: Oh! Oh yes, I am aware of The Rhubarb Triangle

Hazel: The Rhubarb Triangle is a particular area of northern Europe, in the county of Yorkshire, traditionally between the towns of Wakefield, Leeds, and Bradford, which loosely forms a triangle, and this, in the 19th and 20th centuries, and up ‘til now in the UK, really, ‘cause it’s still known for its rhubarb growing, that has been the area where most of the rhubarb in the UK has been produced

Liz: That’s quite a small area

Hazel: It is quite a small area, and the reason that The Rhubarb Triangle became such a well-known area, and the place where the most rhubarb farmers were operating, is apparently because, to grow very well, rhubarb requires a good period of cold

Liz: Ah, so they grow it up north

Hazel: Yes, that is why

(both laugh)

Hazel: Rhubarb was also grown in Scotland, as well, since the 18th century, which probably did quite well there as well. You need a good 6-7 weeks of proper cold for the tubers to activate, I guess, and then it will grow better, so rhubarb production is actually being affected by climate change, in The Rhubarb Triangle, because we get milder winters now, so could be a problem for the rhubarb industry

Liz: And that is why we need to stop global warming

Hazel: Specifically to save the rhubarb triangle

(both laugh)

Hazel: It also gets quite a bit of rain in Yorkshire, which is good for the rhubarb, and apparently the soil is very nitrogen rich. Those are the reasons that it grows very well. That particular area as well is a bit of a frost pocket, so all those things together

Liz: A bit of a what, sorry?

Hazel: A frost pocket

Liz: Oh ok, that makes more sense

Hazel: What did you think I said?

Liz: Rust pocket

Hazel: (laughs) I guess with a lot of rain it probably would be that as well. That’s why The Rhubarb Triangle is a thing, and the technique of forced rhubarb

Liz: (squeaks)

Hazel: Was also developed in Britain

Liz: Is that legal?

Hazel: (laughs) I don’t know, maybe it shouldn’t be

Liz: (laughs) It’s not consented

Hazel: (laughs) We need to develop a procedure to establish rhubarb consent

(both laugh)

Liz: They’ve got spinach to send emails, why not rhubarb? Just send it a little form to fill in

Hazel: Yeah. It can tick, give some verbal consent. This technique apparently, the story goes, it was being grown in the botanic gardens in Chelsea, in the late 18th century, and, accidentally, one of the plants was covered in soil as it started to grow, and when it was discovered, they found that the stems from this plant were much sweeter and tenderer than any of the others, and so apparently that’s how it was discovered that if you force rhubarb, if you grow it with very very little light, then it will be much sweeter

Liz: You force the rhubarb in the dark

Hazel: Yeah, you do

Liz: That’s so mean

Hazel: When you say it like that it sounds bad (laughs)

Liz: That’s so mean. I’m feeling really sorry for the rhubarb

Hazel: My mum actually does that by putting a bucket over it in the garden

Liz: She’s a monster

Hazel: (laughs) It is terrible. I’ll tell her you said that. But industrially they do it

Liz: With a really big bucket

Hazel: In a big shed (laughs) A massive bucket! The secret of rhubarb farming

(both laugh)

Hazel: Oh dear. No, they use a big shed

Liz: What is a shed, if not a bucket with a door

Hazel: I disagree, a bucket is a very different shape. It has to be kept away from light so much that the forced rhubarb is harvested by candlelight

Liz: Ok, now it feels kind of sweet and quaint again

Hazel: (laughs) I know, it’s quite a Romantic image, isn’t it, but apparently it is quite hard work doing it like that, and rhubarb grown this way, and from certain varieties as well, is known as champagne rhubarb

Liz: Why?

Hazel: Because it’s considered the best tasting rhubarb, it’s really sweet and mmm. In fact

Liz: Is that in the tasting notes?

Hazel: The mouthfeel, yeah. Apparently, and I can’t, I didn’t write down who this quote is from, but there’s a quote about the champagne rhubarb, or the forced rhubarb, is that it’s known as champagne rhubarb because “forced rhubarb is, to the rhubarb industry, what champagne is to the wine industry”

Liz: I guess, take their word for it

Hazel: I guess, yeah. That’s quite early in the year, that’s the more expensive form of rhubarb, and then you get field rhubarb, which is the peasant rhubarb

Liz: Unforced

Hazel: Unforced, free rhubarb, that is picked later in the year. In fact, the rhubarb triangle is so established that there is the annual Wakefield Rhubarb Festival

Liz: Adding that to the road trip

Hazel: Absolutely. It looks pretty good, not gonna lie, and I’m just gonna send you this picture from the Guardian article about The Rhubarb Triangle, from the Wakefield Rhubarb Festival, and the caption

Liz: Oh that’s terrifying

Hazel: The caption to this picture is “Stalker: a woman is pursued by a giant stick of rhubarb at the Wakefield Rhubarb Festival, 2015”

Liz: I don’t like it. It will be in my dreams

Hazel: (laughs) You will see this on the twitter, listeners, but just to describe it for you now, it’s a person in a giant rhubarb costume

Liz: Not a particularly good one

Hazel: No, it’s not, is it

Liz: I think that makes it worse

Hazel: Standing quite menacingly behind this woman, who looks like she’s not having a good time. It is an image

Liz: That is a true barbarian plant

Hazel: (laughs) The barbarians are coming. The rhubarbarians

Liz: (laughs)

Hazel: I mentioned that rhubarb has its uses as a dye, as well as a food and a medicine, and that’s actually using the leaves which, as I said, are poisonous, and that’s because they contain a lot of oxalic acid which, apparently that’s what gives the stems their tanginess, but the leaves contain so much of it that they’re extremely poisonous, and there have been cases of rhubarb leaf poisoning the UK

Liz: The classic thing of a plant making something as a defence mechanism and humans going “oh, that’s yummy”

Hazel: “Mmm, spicy” yeah (laughs) Apparently, unfortunately, I haven’t been able to verify this, apparently during World War 1, rhubarb leaves were mistakenly recommended as a source of vitamins during rationing

Liz: God

Hazel: And unfortunately that led to a few deaths. This also means that the rhubarb leaf can be used as a natural mordant, that’s a chemical that fixes dye to fibre, so they have been used as that. They also give colour as well. From the roots of the rhubarb you’ll get oranges and yellows, and then the leaves will dye browns as well, and then you can use it with other dyes as a mordant and to augment the colour as well. It’s traditionally been used for this purpose in Tibet and Nepal, as a source of yellow die

Liz: Mm-hmm

Hazel: And to add to indigo dye pots as well, or fermentation pots

Liz: It gets around, does rhubarb, doesn’t it

Hazel: It does, it definitely does. For something that I thought was a fairly niche plant, I guess, it’s actually got so many uses, and has been used for them in so many different places. Really interesting, and we’ve even got our ornamental species

Liz: Thats cool. I never thought rhubarb was so interesting

Hazel: Definitely. I guess that’s because, I think, in Britain, we associate it with grandma’s crumble

Liz: Yeah. I think it’s my dad’s favourite crumble

Hazel: Ok. Yeah I think we see it as quite an old-fashioned fruit. It brings back images of, I think it was promoted in World War 2 as a source of nutrients as well, so I think it kind of has that image, and also it’s got a bit of a bad rep, because you have to cook it right in order for it to taste good, and school canteens aren’t very good at doing that

Liz: Oh yeah. School dinners are a whole thing

Hazel: Yeah

Liz: School dinners made me a picky eater, genuinely

Hazel: I can imagine. I never liked custard, and they would always try and make me eat the horrible custard in school dinners. Do you wanna hear some of the best variety names?

Liz: Absolutely

Hazel: Gaskin’s Perpetual, Early Albert, Hawk’s Champagne, Reed’s Early Superb, and Grandad’s Favourite

Liz: These sound like beers that you would find in a pub in Discworld

Hazel: (laughs) Do you mean a rhu-bar?

Liz: Maybe I do. Populated exclusively by rhubarbarians

Hazel: (laughs) I think we’ve taken this as far as it can go

Liz: (laughing) We don’t want to force it

(both laugh)

Hazel: That’s it, that’s the end of the podcast, thank you everyone. Oh gosh. Apparently

Liz: Love how it’s a running thing on both of the podcasts I do of me just making a pun so bad the other person decides the podcast is over

Hazel: (laughs) It is

Liz: I don’t know what that says about me

Hazel: It is a trait that I both love and hate about you. But definitely more love. I do love a pun. Apparently there is a Finnish rhubarb mead

Liz: I was just wondering if you could use it in brewing, so guess that confirms it

Hazel: Mm-hmm. You can definitely use it in country wines as well, fruit wine making

Liz: Yeah. I’ve come across rhubarb gin

Hazel: I think I’ve seen that too

Liz: Which I guess is another old people association

Hazel: (laughs) It’s quite nice though I think

Liz: It might just be me that has the association between old people and gin, but it’s definitely there in my brain

Hazel: Yeah, no, I think it’s definitely a thing. So that’s all I’ve got on rhubarb. Hope you enjoyed it

Liz: I very much did

Hazel: (laughs) Where are we going for local larder?

Liz: We’re actually going back to Persia

Hazel: Ooh, that ties in very well

Liz: It does. This is something that has a lot of names, depending on where you are

Hazel: Ok

Liz: But I’m going to be calling it sumalak, because that seems to be the most common one

Hazel: Ok

Liz: Sumalak is the Uzbek name, it also has different names in Persian, Azerbaijani, Tajik, Kyrgiz, Khazhak, probably also other languages, which is a sweet paste made from germinated wheat, which is often eaten around Persian New Year

Hazel: Huh, sweet

Liz: Which was 11 days ago as of recording this, so, when it goes out, a few weeks ago

Hazel: Oh right. I did not know that. So it’s a sweet wheat

Liz: It is a sweet wheat. It seems to be quite ancient, it’s pre-Islamic

Hazel: Ok

Liz: And it’s a part of the traditional food display for Persian New Year. I believe the name of the thing is Haft Seen

Hazel: How do you make wheat taste sweet? Is it fermented?

Liz: Traditionally, you just use the sprouted wheat grains, and the sprouting makes it sweeter ‘cause it’s started to release those sugars

Hazel: Oh wow

Liz: And then…you soak the wheat until it sprouts, crush it into a paste, add more water, until it starts to, some white stuff comes out, I can’t find an exact description of what that it

Hazel: (laughs)

Liz: But I expect it’s starches, from reading around it

Hazel: Ok

Liz: And then you put that in a big pot, sometimes with stones, which I will explain in a second, and then you boil that up, sometimes adding oil or flour, which can help thicken it, but apparently adding flour makes it less sweet

Hazel: Hmm

Liz: And it comes out as this almost chocolate coloured sweet paste

Hazel: Wow

Liz: Which is apparently often served with nutes, especially walnuts

Hazel: That sounds nice

Liz: It does sound really good

Hazel: Like nutella, but not

Liz: There is a story, because there’s always a story for stuff that’s this old

Hazel: Excellent

Liz: There’s an Uzbek story that the name sumalak means thirty angels, because there was a poor mother with two hungry sons, and they got her to seven stones in a pot, and then wheat and water were added, and it, with a lot of cooking, became sumalak, this delicious wheat paste

Hazel: Hmm

Liz: And apparently if you eat sumalak from seven different cauldrons during this New Year celebration, it’s good luck, and will increase your chances, as a new bride, of conceiving that year

Hazel: Ooh. I like that, cover all the bases. One of them will work

Liz: It’s one of seven foods, or at least edible things, that are arranged in a display for Persian New Year, so you get these absolutely beautiful table displays, and I’ll try and find a public domain picture of one to post

Hazel: Yes please

Liz: You get sprouted, normally grains, but can also be lentils, you get sumalak, oliaster, which is a wild olive variety

Hazel: Hmm

Liz: Vinegar, apples, garlic, and sumac

Hazel: Yum

Liz: Which is a delicious spice

Hazel: Oh yeah. I love sumac

Liz: But you can also add other items that…these also begin with the same letter in the Persian alphabet, which makes the S sound, so you also get other things that start with that letter sometimes

Hazel: Ok

Liz: Including coins, and sometimes even clocks

Hazel: Wow

Liz: Feels appropriate for a New Year thing

Hazel: Yeah, for a New Year celebration

Liz: But all of these objects have different symbolic meanings as well, that I won’t go into, because that’ll be a whole extra thing

Hazel: Mm-hmm

Liz: So with that, and also the mythology around it, sumalak is very much a lucky dish to have at New Year

Hazel: Uh-huh

Liz: And I just think that’s interesting

Hazel: Yeah, that’s really cool

Liz: And there’s songs that you sing while you’re making it, and you can make a wish when you throw in the walnuts

Hazel: Oh that’s fantastic

Liz: And it’s just this big family, or sometimes even community, activity, making it

Hazel: Amazing. It’s like making a wish when you stir the Christmas pudding

Liz: Yeah. I just think it’s really nice

Hazel: Yeah, that’s lovely

Liz: Thank you for listening. If you want to suggest an episode, like…we had a suggestion recently, but I’m really sorry, I’m not sure how to pronounce your name, but thank you for your enjoyment of the podcast, and long list of suggestions. You can email breadandthreadpodcast @ gmail.com

Hazel: You can also find us on twitter at breadandthread, where you can find teasers for upcoming episodes, pictures that we talk about on the podcast, we’ll put them there, and just general Bread and Thread food history related news. We are on youtube as Bread and Thread as well. We have youtube versions of our audio and…

Liz: We’re also on tumblr

Hazel: That’s the one

Liz: Where we reblog things, post things, we do work in progress Wednesday, posting pictures of projects, and also just chat about food and domestic history related subjects

Hazel: And we also have a patreon, Bread and Thread, where we have a discord server, and we have monthly recipes as well

Liz: We do. I don’t know what April’s recipe is gonna be yet, so keep an eye out for that

Hazel: Ooh. I think that is it

Liz: That is it

Hazel: So thank you for listening, we will see you next time

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