h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Great post, Emily.

Apparently, Anglicisation and Americanization can be
expanded to include what the French have done to Eastern
cooking. "Poudre fort," which Mycroft mentioned earlier,
includes ginger, cinnamon, nutmeg, black pepper, cloves,
paradise, and galingale, according to a link from the
Society for Creative Anachronism. This could be another
European approximation of Curry, though it seems to lack
fenugreek, cumin, and turmeric. Nevertheless, imitation
(even inept imitation) is the sincerest form of flattery .
(And what of paradise and galingale? I have no idea what
they are.)

And what of Kedgeree, the English approximation of Kijri?
(I may have misspelled one or both of these....)

I have thought of another reason for mixing the spices
yourself: some dried spices don't age well. Quite possibly
the constituents in a mixture might interact badly with
each other. My box of curry powder sits around unused
because not a lot of recipes call for it. Meanwhile,
I am apt to use the individual spices that are called for
in biryani or nasi goreng, and those are apt to be somewhat
fresher.

The search for good spices has been surprisingly powerful
in fostering world trade (think Silk Roads and various
merchant marine routes). On the subject of ginger, for
instance (once the second most important European spice
after pepper), by the 1550s Spain was importing it from
Santiago. Did the European colonists consider spices
so deeply important that they were willing to colonise
other continents in order to start growing them? Well,
perhaps. On the other hand, Gold and silver might have
been a little bit more important to them--but not much .
Were the peasants back in Europe getting restless because they
were stuck with mustard, while the wealthy could afford
the good spices? I can't answer that....

Spices were incredibly important in mediaeval Europe. Think about meat storage - it was dried or salted, and not particularly well at that. The rich wanted spices a) to show how wealthy they were, and b) to mask the taste of the food.

I can't help with paradise, but I know of galingale. It's now called galangal (liang-tiang in China). and is similar to ginger. It makes an appearance in the prologue to the Canterbury tales:

A cook they hadde with hem for the nones,
To boille chiknes with the mary-bones,
And poudre-marchant tart, and galingale.
Wel coude he knowe a draughte of London ale.

Of the spices that you listed as not being in poudre fort, only turmeric wasn't available prior to England's jaunt to India. Is there any chance you could find the recipes for poudre douce and poudre blanche too?

Spices were always important and often more important than gold or silver: remember the fuss the Romans made about salt?

Paul H,

'And what of Kedgeree, the English approximation of Kijri?
(I may have misspelled one or both of these....)'

Since they are transliterations, and both the initial sound and the one indicated by the 'r' do not exist in English (and usually cannot be pronounced by Anglophones, or practically anyone else ) I shouldn't worry too much about spelling.

That stuff, which I would transliterate approximately 'khitchrli', is a protein staple, served at virtually every meal, like 'dal', a combination of rice and legumes that makes up a complete protein in itself. Many millions of people live on one bowl of that a day, or when they can get it, whichever is less frequent.

When people ate that, they seemed to stay alive. So people ate that. It's about that old, and that simple. Dravidian India was already agricultural, before the arrival of the Indo-Aryans. They learnt how to live in the Subcontinent from the Indigenes, the same way any other conquerer did.



In Northern and Central America, they did the same thing with maize and legumes. There was more meat to be had, and it was possible to dry it, but there needed to be something consistent. Yeast-rising bread came not at all to the Americas until Europeans turned up. It came not at all to India, though for all I know the younger generation like the stuff, until WWII, which brought US GIs, ice cream, and 'double roti' (double bread, meaning the thick stuff -- white and gnarsty US style), and Coca-Cola to India in a BIG way. (per maternal unit).

Whoever (Mycroft, I think) said 'of course spices were important - they masked the flavour of tainted meat'. Yes.

The spices listed, cloves, etc. are also powerful pickling agents, and prevented the meat from going bad so fast. The antibiotic properties of some of the spices also both kept the meat clean, and kept the eaters safe if it *was* tainted.



Did any of you ever stud an orange all over with cloves, at christmas? If you did, in say, 1969, it's probably *still* good (or round, and mould free, anyway). Clove-oil, marketed here under the name 'Eugenol', is a very ancient toothache remedy, not just because cloves have anaesthetic properties. It's powerful stuff.

Move closer to the Equator, and even if meat is a non-issue (the Dravidians did eat fresh fish, I believe), food spoilage is faster.

Just a suggestion, perhaps you (Mycroft, Paul H, any lurkers) might want to read Nathan's original entry, and the original PR thread again. Much of what is being said (not by any means all) here is redundant with things there.

Personally, I'm fascinated, but not at all surprised to learn that healers and whatnot in Europe found local plants with similar properties. It goes back to my survival-of-the-fittest comments on the aforementioned thread. I doubt they were necessarily even aware they were *looking* for medicine.

I'm going to quit writing here, and this discussion has now separated itself completely from the point of my original post... not that I shan't read. So please keep it instructive and entertaining!


St. Emily,

Yeh, 'kari' -- funny about that. The Mandarin word for 'chai' - which means 'tea', not that milky slop they sell here under that name - is 'cha'. Fancy! Well, the Malay (I think it's Malay) word 'kutu', for 'body louse' shows up in US English as 'cootie' - meaning lice or any creepy-crawly. In Hindi, it's 'kute'. THAT word is definitely from the Malay, though. There was trade in Asia, languages shared. How...normal.

Signing off unless someone says something spectacularly brilliant, or silly...

Arpeggio, who does not like 'kute', for LeKZ

'Chai' is tea in Russian, too. Sorry, I can speak neither Malay nor Mandarin - I speak an odd dialect called Hokkien.

Hey, thanks a whole bunch for the sugestions and comentaries. Nope, I'm not upset about someone pointing out ways to make my entry better. What I would like, however, is to be able to change my entry to reflect the feedback you have all given. Also, Im thinking about submitting the entry for publication (with all of your comments and suggestions taken into account) in a national magazine. Now that I have used the research I did for "the Guide", do I still have rights to the material? If not, is there a way to un-submit the entry? (not that I want to) Thank you all again!

Re Nathan Jaynes' last posting at http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/guide/F70963?thread=123357 post #26: Hey, thanks a whole bunch for the sugestions and comentaries. Nope, I'm not upset about someone pointing out ways to make my entry better. What I would like, however, is to be able to change my entry to reflect the feedback you have all given. Also, Im thinking about submitting the entry for publication (with all of your comments and suggestions taken into account) in a national magazine. Now that I have used the research I did for "the Guide", do I still have rights to the material? If not, is there a way to un-submit the entry? (not that I want to) Thank you all again! Is this legal? I contributed to the Guide entry. I did not consent to any contribution to an entry under Mr Jaynes' name in any other publication or medium than those to which I agreed per BBC Intellectual Property agreement. Please inform, soonest. Le�lah el Khalil Zendavesta, MAR

Hi Nathan

You still have non-exclusive copyright over everything you've written on h2g2. This means that if a magazine asks for 'exclusive distribution' you can't give it to them - but aside from that, you can do what you like.

If you use any large chunks of text from anyone else, then you'll need to get their permission before publishing them in a magazine, though, and possibly they might ask for a little of the cash you earn from publishing in return. Or possibly not.

There's more here:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/guide/DontPanic-Contrib#3

I hope this doesn't all come as a nasty shock to you!

Incidentally: unsubmission - a bit late now that the sub-eds put all that work into it!

Technically, anything you post to h2g2, you grant a non-exclusive right to the BBC to use in perpetuity, and waive a bunch of moral rights, and so on and so forth. Once you hit the "post" button, that's it - there's no turning back.

You may also want to consider how you might submit the entry for outside publication in a moral way which avoids making anyone want to tear your throat out. That, of course, is a matter for you and your conscience to decide.

-Xanthia

Nathan -- While you could submit the original entry you wrote on curry to a magazine, it's highly unlikely anyone would pay you money to publish something that's available for free on the web. The BBC owns non-exclusive copyright to everything you write here, which you agreed to when you joined up. That means they also have the right to publish your work say, on a CD-ROM or something. I've yet to meet a reputable publisher who would even look at a submission of something that's already available for free online. And no, you can't get away with submitting it and just "not telling" the editor that the article has already been publsihed at h2g2 (the editor's lawyers would sic their dogs on you, and it would be not pretty). Nor can you just make a few changes and claim that it's a completely different work, and then submit it. I've made some more comments at the folliowing thread: http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/guide/F47997?thread=124311 Furthermore, you need to realize that you absolutely CANNOT submit for publication the now visible entry which other people have contributed to, and which a subeditor has made substantive changes to. Doing so would be a *huge* infringement of copyright law, as you would be taking someone else's work as your own. If you want to write an article on curry for a national magazine, I'd suggest you: 1) read a beginner's book on copyright law aimed at freelance writers 2) start a new article from scratch 3) do your own research, rather than using all the info people kindly posted on h2g2 for you. You need to realize that these researchers on h2g2 did *not* post all that helpful info on curry so that you could go publish an article in a magazine, take sole credit, and get paid for it. People who do research for freelance writers are told the terms of the work upfront, and are *paid* for such research. (Although the majority of freelance writers do their own research.) These researchers posted that info to help you make your *guide entry* a better one. To use their work and then get it published elsewhere would be to take advantage of their good-natured advice. Believe me, I'm not trying to jump down your throat here. But this kind of situation could get very ugly, very quickly so I thought I'd try for some preemptive action. I'm sure you didn't realize that your idea would have so many unpleasant ramifications, so I thought I'd try and spell them out for you. Mikey

First, let me say that although Leïlah el Khalil Zendavesta (LeKZ) did contribute a couple of ideas to the curry piece (I did thank her and I elaborated on the ideas myself), it would be a far cry from saying that the piece was co-written or even substantially added to by anyone but myself. I do appreciate the input everyone gave and I would be glad to credit anyone who did provide useful information, but I do hold non-exclusive rights to it. I will not and do not want to take credit for anything that is not mine. If I were to get paid for submitting this piece to a publication and I was obligated to compensate LeKZ for her (or their) contribution, I would also be obligated to compensate my mother who gave some helpful suggestions, 4-5 packets of curry seasoning (where I found lists of ingredients), the editors of the Guide who added bold headings to the entry, and a friend of mine who first introduced me to curry and without whom, this entry would not be. The list of possible contributors could go on.

When crediting a person(s) in literature, it is not necessary to ask the person's permission. This rule is followed in every publication I have been involved with. I have asked permission, as a matter of courtesy. This has been quite a rude awakening for me, I envisioned submitting an article to a publication (here in the US) and mentioning h2g2 as a side line (a project have been very excited about and want to see grow). I thought everyone would be supportive, and just as excited as myself.

Mikey, as for your pre-emptive strike against publication of the entry: First, most magazines are very happy to include articles and information that can be found elsewhere (and yes, even free on the internet). Even though it can be found elsewhere, if the information is important and pertinent then it will be included. Second, I'm not sure where you came up with the idea that I would not inform a that I had previously published the piece. It would be ethically wrong to not inform them. I understand you wanting to protect the contributors and authors of the Guide, I do, however, consider your response to my query an over-reaction on your part. I would love to mention the Guide in the article (a little publicity never hurts), I am proud of being a part of this project. I have previously written for several publications, so I don't think an elementary book on copy right law is going to be useful to me.

What would be helpful is some support. Maybe something like this: "That's great, I looked at your entry (it was fantastically written) and it looks like your work. You may want to get permission from any contributors and tell them where it will be published and when. Don't forget to credit them if you quoted them or used their information. Please mention h2g2 if you have the chance."

—By all means, protect the integrity of the guide, but not with anality, realize that your contributors are coming from all walks of life. Be understanding and supportive, and I am sure that the Guide will draw many high quality researchers for years to come (the guide is truly and idea before its time) . Rule the Guide with an Iron editorialship and this wonderful project will languish in partial obscurity for years until someone else has the idea and does it right.

Hi again Nathan.

I believe there is perhaps some element of confusion here. Perhaps I can alleviate that to some degree. Perhaps I will serve no purpose but to inflame the situation and annoy people. I seem to have a knack for that option recently... standard disclaimer: I'm not a lawyer, and this isn't legal advice. I'm going to assume that this entry doesn't contain any material created by LeKZ or Paul H or anyone else, for simplicity.

There will be (once the wheels of the guide have gone round and round) two versions of this entry. The first version is the version that will be in the Edited Guide. This will have been worked upon by you, Emily (the sub-editor), an in-house editor, and possibly an artist. It can be found here:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/guide/A581311

The second entry is the version which will remain in the Unedited Guide. This has been worked on by you. It could be found at this URL, but now appears to have been deleted, or that may by a glitch in the system:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/guide/A570566

The former will have one non-exclusive copyright which is jointly owned by an inhouse editor, Emily, possibly an artist, and you; and one non-exclusive copyright which is owned by the BBC. The latter has one non-exclusive copyright which is owned by you, and one which is owned by the BBC.

This concludes the legal part of what I want to say. To be continued...

Nathan --

The piece that is now visible has been edited by someone other than yourself. This person has added bits, changed bits, etc. Entries in the Edited Guide credit both the author, the sub-editor, and any contributors the editors and/or author considered significant. While I am not personally aware of the degree to which LeKZ matter may have contributed to the piece, I am aware (as a sub-editor myself) the degree of impact a sub-editor has on the piece. Elsewhere in the guide, you yourself have commented that the entry has been changed significantly by the sub-editor since you wrote it -- how can you now claim that it is solely your work?

You are also still avoiding the issue that it's starting to look like you obtained extensive advice on this piece under false pretenses -- it's unlikely that LeKZ would have helped out to whatever extent she did had she known that your ultimate goal was publication outside of the guide. The others who contributed in Peer Review or elsewhere may feel the same way. And I can't speak for this particular sub-editor, but I know that *I* would not want to invest hours into editing a piece as a *volunteer* only to have someone else publish it professionally.

I'm not entirely sure why you're expecting everyone to be so nice and friendly when you're making many people feel as if you've taken advantage of them. It's one thing for a freelance writer to interview people, ask questions, etc., telling people that he/she is writing an article for X magazine. It's another thing entirely to do so under the guise of writing for a volunteer-based website, wait for the article to improve, and then announce that you're going to publish it elsewhere.


Mikey

This starts the Wild Assumption part of my comments...

My wild assumption is that when you say you are planning to work on your entry and perhaps try and get it published, you are referring to the unedited version of the entry. This makes sense, because this is the version which you can actually edit - and I think that this is very much the correct way to do things

I am glad that you have considered the ethical side of this thing. As I said, that is very much a matter for you and your conscience, so I would not wish to intervene. However, I would like to express my happiness that you have decided to inform the researchers here of the publishing, and at your desire to mention the Guide as a whole in the article. That shows a moral concern sadly lacking in so many people today...

I didn't see your earlier post(26) here as asking permission, but words are so very difficult to interpret on occasion In any case, I very much applaud your asking of permission. It would appear, though, that LeKZ do not wish to grant the permission which you have asked for, or possibly are merely concerned and wishes to be consulted. Further conversation with them might be the answer, perhaps?

It is perhaps worth making clear, however, that neither I, nor Mike, rule the Guide. That priviledge belongs to the BBC, we both are mere Researchers, just as you are, and are in fact trying to help. It just might not look like that... I am certainly keen on the idea of publishing elsewhere, not least because it demonstrates the high quality and genuine value of entries on h2g2 - I'd just like it to be done in such a way that everyone is happy. Come to that, you'll excuse me if I wait till it is actually published before celebrating...

Martin - not at all because he's unpublished himself...

Nathan --

If what you are intending is to take the entry you wrote as it was before Peer Review, before an editor touched it, and polishing/submitting that, then I apologize for insinuating that you were doing something unethical. I still would be surprised that anyone would publish something available freely online -- none of the editors I've worked with would. They would be interested in something as the same *topic* as something online, but not something where essentially the same text is online. But hey, it's a free country, and I guess some magazines out there have different standards.

If, however, you're planning on polishing/submitting the entry that's currently visible (which is how I interpreted the posting all this derived from), then all my comments still stand. While you originated that piece, it is now clearly the work of several people (including the listed co-authors and the sub-editor).

Mikey

Mikey the Humming Mouse, Sub-ed, Guru, and Helpful Person,

I do not know where to look for the original Peer Review thread for the original article as originally written by Mr Jaynes, but you probably do. You, or preferably someone in the Towers, could then do a comparative review of
1) The sub-edited version, as it appears here, with St Emily's, my, and Paul H's text and ideas incorporated,
2) The original version of Mr Jaynes' article,
3) The text of the Peer Review thread, with my and Paul H's original comments.

You, and/or representatives from the In-House Editorial Staff will find that though *Mr Jaynes* did not incorporate much that I said, the article as it now stands (the one he wishes to publish elsewhere) contains a substantial contribution from me, and enough from Paul H that he too, was credited as a co-researcher. Mr Jaynes is telling the truth when he says *he* did not use much of what I said, because he did not, to my knowledge, do much editing on the article when it was in Peer Review. St Emily made the decision, as is her prerogative as sub-editor, to incorporate text, ideas, comments, and sentences verbatim from the PR thread, as she evidently thought they would improve the article.

If I understood Mr Jaynes correctly, he wants *this* version 'back', in order to edit it 'incorporating all [our] sugestions [sic] and comentaries [sic]' for publication elsewhere. Under no circumstances do I agree to Mr Jaynes using my input from the Peer Review thread at any time, for any reason. I posted one long, detailed and factual post about the medicinal properties of spicy foods in general, and curry in particular; understood from the point of view of a person who was raised with a 'food-as-medicine' mindset in a Hindu family with a mother from India, and one follow-up post. My comments were complementary to his list style collection of 'spices and their healing properties', which he, as an herbalist, knows well. Some serious factual flaws, like Mr Jaynes' absurd suggestion that 'curry' is an invention of Western restauranteurs, appeared in his original text. I pointed them out in the PR thread, but that did not seem to have any influence on Mr Jaynes, who left his original text undedited.

St Emily, given conflicting factual data, chose to use the material in the original text, regarding that issue. As the content of *this* discussion thread proves, that particular claim on Mr Jaynes' part is fallacious and would need to be repaired. How Mr Jaynes can 'repair' this erroneous statement, other than to omit it, is quite beyond me. St Emily used most of what I said in my posts. It is wholly untrue that this edited article contains only a 'couple of ideas' of mine.

For example, Mr Jaynes did not mention cardamom seed, fenugreek, or fennel at all in *his* article. He also never made any mention of 'body thermostat', which I take to be St Emily's rewording of something I said; spicy food make people perspire, which cools them down. He certainly made no reference to Native American and Native Central American people.

I feel stongly that this situation needs to be examined in detail by the Towers, as I am acutely aware of intellectual property laws --which are, incidentally, much more readily prosecutable in the States than they are in the UK. If Mr Jaynes wants to publish a version of the Guide's Edited article in the States, he can pay me 27.5% of any monies he makes off the sale, and of any royalties. Paul H and St Emily will have to state their positions in the matter. That is, of course, if the BBC and the Guide do not prevent him from attempting to publish. They shall do, since any such efforts to publish, on Mr Jaynes' part, would be illegal -- especially here in the States.

What Mr Jaynes does with his list, which is what his article originally was, is between him and the BBC. Copyright infringement is illegal, everywhere. I agree that a question of 'false pretenses' exists here. It was unclear when Mr Jaynes posted that article to Peer Review, whether he understood the process. We are *all* bound by the BBC's Terms and Conditions, and no one is above them. Either Mr Jaynes did not read, or he did not understand those terms and conditions. This, in an of itself, is one of the most serious breaches of the House Rules of which I am aware.

Please alert the Towers. I have nothing further to add, except a certain degree of moral shock at what *seems* to be intentional intellectual dishonesty. That is the way this situation appears to me, too, especially since Mr Jaynes keeps calling the Edited Entry 'his', despite his initial complaints that it had been 'changed', and so was not 'his' any more.

Thank you for all your help, Guru Mikey, and Scout Lucinda.

Leïlah el Khalil Zendavesta, MAR

Arpeggio wrote: "Please alert the Towers."

done.

Mikey, who wishes this situation could have been resolved all nice and friendly like.

The PR thread: http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/guide/F69700?thread=118744 As mentioned, the original version of this entry appears to be gone: http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/guide/test570566 http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/guide/A570566 Emily should have a copy of it in her email box, however. -myre (getting out of here) You've alerted the Towers? *hastilly draws a pentagram on the floor* Don't just stand there! Get the holy water sprinkler... and don't forget the extra heavy copy of the bible! That's not to repel evil spirits - just to try and knock the lawyers unconscious... I was hoping for a friendly resolution too. I'm still convinced it's just a big misunderstanding, but there you go. I'm being naive again, aren't I?... Lucinda - "melodramatic - me?"

My sister has had lots of pieces published,
and the monetary rewards have been pretty trivial.
She does not write solely for the money, of course,
but this should be an indication that caution is needed
in this case. After stirring up the people in the Towers,
and causing some distress for the other people involved
in the writing/editing of the article, might Mr. Jaynes
find that the ultimate reward failed to compensate him
adequately? Or at all, in a worst-case scenario?

The topic of health benefits from herbs/spices used in
Asian cuisines is big enough to be featured in a book,
complete with recipes. The useful properties of each
spice could be considered in detail, and then a delicious
recipe featuring that spice could be provided. This
is something you can't get for free over the Internet.

Such a book is already available for free over the internet. It's called 'Curry, Spice & All Things Nice - the what - where - when' by Peter and Colleen Grove.