Talk:piccalilli
Etymology edit
To speculate on etymology a moment, perhaps this is a blend of the familiar pickle (English) and unfamiliar paco lilla (Indic), which I’d phrase more as “from paco lilla, influenced by English pickle”. Presumably of late 18th/early 19th century origin, given that attested from 1845, and we see paco lilla in 1805 Art of Cooking (which had appeared since 1747). Since the term also exist in the US for some similar, some different recipes, this suggest that various pickles were being made and named in US revolutionary times (dunno about extent of language interaction post-revolution) and later, and the term adhered to some of them.
Culinarily, the British (and some American) recipe feels pretty Indian, and turmeric is a pretty common Indian spice – compare aloo gobi, which is potatoes and cauliflower, which turmeric and others. There are obvious culinary words of Indic roots, such as mulligatawny (Tamil), also characterized by the yellow from turmeric, and this could well be one of them.
If anyone can add more details (esp. on Indic roots), that would be welcome, but I’ll keep my speculations to this talk page.
- —Nils von Barth (nbarth) (talk) 00:29, 30 September 2010 (UTC)
'Paco lilla' is itself predated by 'Indian Pickle, or Piccalillo', a recipe published in 1769 for a mustard and turmeric-based pickle that is plainly of the piccalilli type. Scans of this book still exist – see https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=lY4EAAAAYAAJ&dq=Piccalillo&pg=PA337&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=Piccalillo&f=false And although not published until 1925, the Receipt Book of Ann Blencowe carries a recipe for 'Pickle Lila, an Indian Pickle' written in or before 1694. So I don't think you are at all mistaken in arguing an Indian source for the dish. As for the etymology, I'm tempted to speculate, based on the 1694 title, that the aristocrat who passed the recipe to Mrs Blencowe tasted the pickle in India, asked what it was and received the reply 'Lila' – a Hindi term centred on the idea of playing with things or creativity. So a possible translation is 'experiment' (or more loosely, 'just something I knocked up'). Grubstreet (talk) 06:50, 20 May 2019 (UTC)