Lembas

[Mhoram]

I always pictured them more like unleven bread, but twinkies are more fun.

[Elrian]

And taste better [img]smilies/wink.gif[/img]

Love the new Avatar pic Mhoram! [img]smilies/wink.gif[/img]

[Aralaithiel]

OK...whoever posted about the Elves taking the Lembas recipie to the Havens and marketing them as Twinkies...You found us out!!!!! [img]smilies/eek.gif[/img] So much for our ancient Elvish secret! (For those of you Americans old enough to remember the Calgon laundry detergent commercials in the 70's - I was making a reference to the Chinese guy who tells the lady how he got her laundry so clean was by using an "ancient Chinese secret")
Twinkies Rule!!!!!!!!!!

[mark12_30]

Modifications to Lostgaeriel's Journey Cake:

WHEAT-FREE, DAIRY-FREE LEMBAS (no kidding)

This past baking session (on Monday) was about varying the Journey Cake recipe. I like what came of it. I've tried to get the consistency as much like a Biscotti as I could, which is how I imagine Lembas to be (at least, if not right out of the oven, then by four weeks into the journey...) This is how I read Tolkien's text: "munching then as best they could with their parched mouths", etc. Normally, I toast things anyway; I'm a "crunchy" type.

Thihnking about Biscottis, I tried twice-baking the Lembas, and it might work if I had more drying racks, but I still ended up toasting the twice-baked wafers this morning as they had moistened back up in the tin.


Here's a brief summary of what I do. For wheat flour, normal white baking flour, I substitute (measure for measure) a gluten-free blend (equal parts cornstarch, tapioca flour, and bean flour, plus 1/4 tsp xanthan gum per cup.) For milk I substitute vanilla soymilk, measure for measure. And to hide the bean flour taste, I add a tsp molasses (or honey, or maple...)

So first, I take the Journey Cake recipe-- 2 cups corn meal, 1 cup "flour", 1 cup brown sugar, 2 tsp baking powder, 1/4 cup oil (okay, I use BUTTER...), 2 cups "milk", 1 tsp Molasses.

It mixes into a pancake- like batter. I pour it into well-buttered skillets and pans at about pancake thickness and put them into a hot oven (it wsays 385 but I don't trust that. Use Cookie temperature.) When I test for doneness, I think, "Cookie"; the edges should brown and pull slightly away from the pan, and it's vaguely cookie consistency. I remove from pans, cool on racks (need more racks) and cut into squares or wedges. Sometimes i re-bake if they are too moist; I want crunchy-colden, like a sugar-cookie or biscotti.

I wanted to try some other grains besides the corn meal. I have white rice flour and brown rice flour that I need to use up, so I decided to try those.

So, second batch: substituted white rice flour for corn meal, and white sugar for brown sugar, and honey for molasses. Wow. Heavy and very sweet and white. Reminded me of Beorn's honey cakes. Very moist when golden; hard and crunchy when toasted.

Third batch: substituted brown rice flour for corn meal, used brown sugar, and maple syrup for molasses. Came out lighter than the second batch, similar in texture to the corn meal variety.

Fourth batch: substituted white rice flour for corn meal, and white sugar for brown sugar, but added 2 tsp maple. Also heavy and very sweet and white, moist when golden, hard and crunchy when toasted.

There you have it so far. Toasted, I think they would all keep and travel rather well, and be a very chompy-crunchy texture. I intend to test this theory on my next business trip! I can never get wheat-free bread on travel, so this is for me a perfect solution to an annoying problem.

[Inderjit Sanghera]

"It was said that it may have been a property of the lembas that enabled Frodo to survive for so long. It was also distasteful to Gollum and the orcs, so a vital ingredient of it may have been the makers themselves, infusing it with a quality of Goodness that was bad for Bad people. What's this about it not being good for mortals?!" -posted by Halbarad

Lembas were said to open a lust for Immortaility in Mortals, hence the Fellowship excluded, Turin was the only other mortal to ever taste Lembas.

[Lostgaeriel]

Note: A 'pasty' is a type of meat pie that can be eaten from the hand – and sustained Cornish tin miners for a long day’s toil. Pronounced with a short 'a' sound.

A Cornish miner talking about pasties:

‘A wadn’ no good at all, time I got down to fifty fathoms a were scat to lembs [broken to bits]. The wans mawthor made wadn’ break if they’d faaled to the bottom of the shaft!’

Source: The Pasty Book by Hettie Merrick, Tor Mark Press, Redruth ©1995. ISBN 080253470

All I could think of when I first read this passage was the exchange between Merry and Pippin when they were captives of the Uruk-hai:

‘Lembas!’ whispered Pippin. ‘Lembas: I’ve got some. Have you? I don’t think they’ve taken anything but our swords.’

‘Yes, I had a packet in my pocket,’ answered Merry, ‘but it must be battered to crumbs. Anyway I can’t put my mouth in my pocket!’

Any comments on the source of the word lembas? I know there are lots of language experts on this forum. (If there's anything to this, Tolkien was making quite a good joke.)

[Child of the 7th Age]

Lostgaeriel,

Hmm... That's fascinating.

I'm no Elvish scholar, but the origin of the word 'lembas' is Sindarin, and means journey or waybread. The older form is 'lenn-mbass'. I believe another Quenyan name was 'coimas' or bread of life.

My guess is that "lembas" as a word existed before Tolkien wrote the particular scene between Merry and Pippin that you are describing. In that sense, the similar Cornish word wouldn't have had a direct impact on the origin of lembas. However, Tolkien knew a vast number of languages and it's certainly possible he had the Cornish word in the back of his mind as he wrote out that particular passage, hence giving the scene an underlying double meaning.

By the way, on my dad's side, I am a "Cousin Jenny" whose family came to the UP of Michigan long years ago to mine copper. I know absolutely no Cornish, but I do make a "mean" pasty and also saffron cake. The story you tell about throwing the pasties down the mine shaft and not having them break....I heard that many times in my childhood (although definitely in English!). If I heard such a tale way across the Atlantic, surely JRRT would have been aware of it, as well as the actual dialect and language that would have been used. Shippey has show how much "word play" there is shot throughout LotR. This could be another instance. But, like you, I can only guess. Perhaps there's someone else who can speak with more certainty on this.

I have a Cornish dictionary on mail order. If and when it gets here, I'll have a look at that word to see what it says. I couldn't find anything directly relevent in the Cornish word lists on the internet. Thanks for the reference to that 'pasty book'. I'll try to dig up a copy.

[Lostgaeriel]

Thanks Child of the 7th Age!

I'm not sure if lembs is actually a Cornish word. Like you, I can't find it in any of the on-line Cornish dictionaries. Perhaps it's a long-out-of-use English word.

My mother's family is from Cornwall. I'll be visiting my relatives there in the spring - first time for me. I'll ask them about the word.

Rydhsys rag Kernow lemmyn. Free Cornwall Now.

[Fordim Hedgethistle]

Well, I don't know how relevant or helpful this might be but it's what I was able to uncover:

lem is a form of the Old English word leam which means, "light, flame; a flash, ray, or gleam of light; brightness, gleam."

bas is an archaic (Middle-English, like in Chaucer or Gawain) form of base. In the earliest uses of the word, the moral or social connotations were not at play (that is, people were not of "base" birth, bad behaviour was not considered "base"). Instead, it meant simply that something was low or close to the ground (earth?).

So how's this: lem+bas = a gleam of light or flame that is close to the earth?

This would make sense insofar as lembas is a form of Elvish magic, but it is also bread: what could be more homey than that?

(I just love the Oxford English Dictionary.)

[Mithalwen]

Sindarin I believe is based on Welsh, which I believe is in the same language family as Cornish. So it is not impossible that Tolkien knew this word .. but if he didn't I think he would have been pleased by the coincidence.

Ooh saffron cake .... yummy.....

[Lalwendë]

In Breton 'bread' is bara, and I think it is the same in Welsh. If Cornish, Welsh and Breton are all of the same family wouldn't the word for bread be similar? Correct me if I'm wrong! Lembs could be some kind of dialect word (drawn no doubt from the Cornish language) for 'bits'.

As an aside, I read in Bill Bryson's The Lost Continent that he was travelling through a quite desolate part of Michigan when he saw a sign advertising Cornish Pasties and intrigued had to go and find out more. It is obviously an area with a history of immigration from Cornwall. And there is a tale that the pasties were made with a savoury filling at one end and a sweet one at the other; the pastry was made deliberately tough as it was not meant to be eaten, being there merely to protect the contents from the toxins encountered in the mines.

[Michael Wilhelmson]

Just a side note, over in the States we have this horrific hardtack bread that soldiers used to eat before the WWII. If it was eaten by the British in the Great war, Tolkien must obviously have eaten some of this "mineral" and hoped with all his heart for hardtack that was actually nutritional, and somewhat pleasing to the palette. Thus, a tasty, useful waybread.

[mark12_30]

Don't make it with Quinoa flour.

**convulsions**

[Neithan]

Just a side note, over in the States we have this horrific hardtack bread that soldiers used to eat before the WWII. If it was eaten by the British in the Great war, Tolkien must obviously have eaten some of this "mineral" and hoped with all his heart for hardtack that was actually nutritional, and somewhat pleasing to the palette. Thus, a tasty, useful waybread.

Yes, I thought of hardtack when Gimli talked about Cram. You might say that Lembas is the Elvish version of Cram, or more likely that Cram is a failed attempt to copy Lembas.