# Español, Occitan, Français (?): fruichad los pollos



## trax

This is from an 1898 cookbook.  This recipe is for Chicken Fricassee.  

"Fruichad los pollos y poned los pedazos en agua fría, á la que añadireis una copa de vino blanco ó dos cucharadas de vinagre."


What does "fruichad" mean?  I suspect the instructions are to clean or cut up the chicken before soaking the pieces in the wine/vinegar water.


----------



## boroman

Trinchad. Trinchar.
¿Es un texto escaneado?


----------



## trax

boroman said:


> Trinchad. Trinchar.
> ¿Es un texto escaneado?


That seems like just the right word.  Thank you!

I am looking at a PDF that appears to be a picture of the text but I can read it clearly and the author used the word "fruichad."  Could have been another typo (like the one you corrected before).


----------



## Ballenero

Hi!
Could you show us the picture somehow?


----------



## trax

Here is the requested picture.


----------



## Ballenero

No tengo ni idea.


----------



## trax

Ballenero said:


> No tengo ni idea.


I think that boroman got it right:  trinchar, trinchad.  It makes sense.


----------



## jilar

Yo también pensé inicialmente en trinchar. Por el contexto y porque tiene sentido en tal frase.
Pero el documento pone claramente "fruichad". Eso sería el imperativo de un supuesto "fruichar".

Puestos a buscar alguna explicación, en castellano podría ser un préstamo del francés, que no cuajó finalmente. Pues el francés era la lengua de referencia en esos tiempos y, sobre todo, en el ambiente culinario internacional.

Dicho esto, el único "fruichar" que observo detecta Google al buscar tal término es en un libro de 1596, escrito en francés, donde el pequeño texto que acompaña al enlace del resultado muestra lo siguiente:

"... là ou ingrasind.de venir avec grand *fruichar* quelon doibre estimer eftre chose mal à propos defe hazarder pour y parvenir à ce que nous ..."

El libro sería este
Translat de certaine lettre espaignolle, escritte par Jean Baptista de Tassis, conseiller d'estat du roy d'Espaigne `a Bruselles, le dernier may l'an 1595 ... par laquelle il appert clairement, que Espaignol & le Conseil d'Espaigne continuent ... en leur intention, pour asseurer par force, faulceté et tromperie leur ... tyrannie partout, et principallement en ces Païs Bas


----------



## swift

jilar said:


> Dicho esto, el único "fruichar" que observo detecta Google al buscar tal término es en un libro de 1596, escrito en francés, donde el pequeño texto que acompaña al


Lo que se lee allí es “avec grand fruict”, con gran beneficio. El resto de la transcripción es bastante defectuosa, debido al pobre reconocimiento automatizado del texto. Me parece una pista engañosa originada por las limitaciones de Google Books. Por lo demás, en francés no existen verbos acabados en –ar; habría que buscar un infinitivo en –er. El único verbo que se asemeja algo es “fruisser”, pero es tan arcaico para la época en que se publicó la receta y su semantismo es tan incompatible con un contexto culinario que me parece muy dudoso que tenga algo que ver con este misterioso hapax.


----------



## swift

trax said:


> Here is the requested picture.  View attachment 59206


Could you give us more details about the book? Author, full title, publisher and location could help. I’m thinking that there’s a slight chance this could be either (1) a Provençal or Occitan borrowing or (2) a verb describing a technique based on an eponym.


----------



## Circunflejo

swift said:


> I’m thinking that there’s a slight chance this could be either (1) a Provençal or Occitan borrowing


In provençal fruchar means either dar fruto or _gâter, user, disperser_. The former doesn't fit here. The latter..., well, I'm not an expert in French and it seems that those verbs have diferent meanings so I don't know if any of them will fit.


----------



## trax

swift said:


> Could you give us more details about the book? Author, full title, publisher and location could help. I’m thinking that there’s a slight chance this could be either (1) a Provençal or Occitan borrowing or (2) a verb describing a technique based on an eponym.


Encarnación Pinedo is the author.  El cocinero español is the title.  Written in Spanish but published out of San Francisco in 1898.  She was born in 1848 in the San Francisco area, a descendent of Basque-speaking people.  Some of the recipes she has in the book are modifications of those found in Nuevo Cocinero Mexicano, which was published in the 1830s and 1840s (and later) and references recipes that came over from Spain, so they could be older than the 1800s.  I have noticed that some words she spells with slight differences than the current spellings - sometimes I wonder if she had only heard the words and was writing them down with a perceived spelling.

I find it interesting that she changed words for this recipe -- all the ones around it use the phrase, "Despues de limpios y vaciados los pollos se trincharán en pedazos no muy chicos" -- however, this recipe is the only one in the set that asks you to put the pieces in cold water with wine or vinegar.  

Did you notice that "trinchar" shows up in the directions in the above paragraph?  I hadn't realized the connection until just now.  Should I not believe that boroman was correct with the "trinchar/trinchad" suggestion?  It sure seems to fit.


----------



## swift

Circunflejo said:


> In provençal fruchar means either dar fruto or _gâter, user, disperser_. The former doesn't fit here. The latter..., well, I'm not an expert in French and it seems that those verbs have diferent meanings so I don't know if any of them will fit.


I was thinking that perhaps there could be a semantic shift of the main meaning of _fruchar _in the langues d’Oc that could have transpired to _fruichar_ meaning ‘extraer las piezas carnosas aprovechables del pollo’ (as opposed to the gibblets).


trax said:


> Did you notice that "trinchar" shows up in the directions in the above paragraph? I hadn't realized the connection until just now. Should I not believe that boroman was correct with the "trinchar/trinchad" suggestion? It sure seems to fit.


Thanks for the additional context. Now I believe @boroman is on the right track.


----------



## trax

swift said:


> I was thinking that perhaps there could be a semantic shift of the main meaning of _fruchar _in the langues d’Oc that could have transpired to _fruichar_ meaning ‘extraer las piezas carnosas aprovechables del pollo’ (as opposed to the gibblets).
> 
> Thanks for the additional context. Now I believe @boroman is on the right track.


I think you have a good insight.



trax said:


> I think you have a good insight.


@swift :  I really like how you found a possible path for her word -- and that it was more than just a typo.  May I use that in my translation notes?


----------



## swift

trax said:


> May I use that in my translation notes?


Go for it!


----------



## trax

swift said:


> Go for it!


Thanks!


----------



## Penyafort

A logical evolution of FRUCTA in Spanish would give frucha, as in Occitan, from which a *fruchar verb could be inferred, meaning give or add fruit. But the word is poorly attested and seems to have already got lost in medieval Spanish.

This is either an idiolectic adaptation of a verb used then in France, or rather a bad transcription of the verb _trinchar_, which actually makes more sense. If it was taken from a handwritten source, _Trinchad _and _Fruichad _could easily have been mistaken.


----------



## trax

Penyafort said:


> A logical evolution of FRUCTA in Spanish would give frucha, as in Occitan, from which a *fruchar verb could be inferred, meaning give or add fruit. But the word is poorly attested and seems to have already got lost in medieval Spanish.
> 
> This is either an idiolectic adaptation of a verb used then in France, or rather a bad transcription of the verb _trinchar_, which actually makes more sense. If it was taken from a handwritten source, _Trinchad _and _Fruichad _could easily have been mistaken.


I sometimes wonder if the original transcript was handwritten.  But if it had been, the author's handwriting must not have been poor as it is a 300+ page book and most of it (I'm about 40% through it) makes sense.  This makes me think the typesetter had few issues with her writing.  Sometimes her spelling is off a little (most commonly, using b for v or a for e) which makes me think she was writing words she had primarily heard or said.  This could be the case for fruichad, although it seems like a big leap.


----------



## Circunflejo

Well, if it was hand-written, it could be _fricad_.


----------



## Rocko!

Borré mi respuesta anterior en este hilo porque hay demasiados siglos de distancia entre la palabra francesa que yo pienso que podría ser una candidata y la palabra que aparece en el texto de la receta. Sin embargo, en vista de que la palabra sigue siendo un misterio y a que cambiaron de lugar la consulta (de un foro anterior a este), creo que, aunque la palabra que yo encontré no sea la respuesta, puede quedar aquí como una "curiosidad" (no sé de qué clase).
A mí, la palabra de la receta me parece que debería significar "trocear", y creo que por esa línea va el significado probablemente arcaico de froisser (revisé en diccionarios modernos y vi que hoy día significa principalmente "arrugar", "ofender" y "lesionar"; nada que ver con "trocear"). Así lo dice el diccionario de 1694 de Pierre Richelet, _Nouveau dictionnaire françois_:





Después del "punto y seguido" que precede a la palabra "piéces", el diccionario de Richelet dice "Briser", que revisando los diccionarios modernos es la palabra que hoy día significa "romper".

Los nativos del francés o profundos conocedores de ese idioma son los que podrían decir que tan cercana es la palabra "froisser", en lo fonético, con "fruichar" (que es el verbo que yo supongo que surge de pasar al infinitivo el "fruichad"). De todas maneras, los siglos que hay entre la fecha de publicación del diccionario y la receta, así como la probabilidad de una tremenda casualidad hacen que todo quede en un "quizá en otra vida o en otro universo".


----------

