On Wed, 7 Mar 2007 08:56:25 -0600, "TMOliver"
wrote:


"Robert Klute" wrote ....
, "Mark Zanger"
wrote:

The obvious thing, if this matters to you, is to test the recipe both
ways.
I can see either one in a 1951 book. General Foods test kitchen could have
wanted the limited garlic effect (although four cloves seems like a lot if
you are going to remove them anyway) and made an editing error, or could
have wanted clove cloves for a quasi-Greek effect.

I would have thought the use of cloves would have been to reflect a
Moorish influence. As would any 'Spanish' dish that included cloves,
mace, nutmeg, cinnamon, etc.

Other than with mincemeat and a few dishes from the Middle East, I'm not
familiar with the use of "cloves" in this ingredient mix, but do see the
sense and sensibility of cloves of garlic...

Besides, until now, I had not realized that Campbell's Condensed Tomato Soup
was a major component in the Moorish Pantry....

The use of tomatoes along moves the dish from Moorish/Spanish origin into
the modern world. One may trace the arrival of Rice on the Iberian
Peninsula to the Moors (tenuously), but rice dishes tended to be prepared
with liquids from other than the tomato, still waiting for the cargo ship to
haul in Transpondia....


By that reasoning, there would be no tomatoes in Italian dishes. As
for the use of soup mix, this recipe is from a 1951 cookbook. This was
an age when cream of mushroom soup was the universal replacement for
bechamel.

Also, this could be an adaptation of a Mexican dish in the 'Spanish
style'. In that case, again, either garlic or spice could have been
used. The best de terminator would be to examine other recipes in the
same cook book and see where the same ingredient and technique is used
to build a profile, since here it is ambiguous.