I have a small box of fresh dates on my kitchen counter & have been eating them as they ripen (soften) though some are still quite tasty when they are fresh & crunchy. Shall I roast a few to see what happens? Trudy Trudy S. Kawami, PhD Director of Research Arthur M. Sackler Foundation 461 East 57th Street New York, NY 10022 212-980-5400 X19 www.arthurmsacklerfdn.org From: Cooking technologies of ancient Mediterranean cultures. [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Mennat-Allah El Dorry Sent: Tuesday, September 02, 2014 4:59 AM To: [log in to unmask] Subject: Re: Roasting dates The people toasting the dates always either explicitly said they were doing this for storability, or implied it. This practice could have started for another reason, perhaps to a specific variety as Ralph Hancock mentioned in his email to this thread, but this knowledge was lost along the years, and it became related to storage in people's minds. I have only seen this done with ripened red zagloul dates. Thanks to all, Menna Am Montag, 1. September 2014 schrieb Beatrice Hopkinson : It could be that the dates were not fully ripe but still yellow needed heating to further ripen them before eating. When fully ripe there is a lot of sugar in dates so presumably this keeps them for quite a time, and presumably this is not true of dates that have not ripened sufficiently to develop sugar. The growing of dates apparently requires extreme dry heat in a non-humid atmosphere, in which case they could grow rotten. Date palms do require water, but only at the roots, so care is taken to keep the dates above dry. Bea ######################################################################## To unsubscribe from the ANCIENT-FOOD-TECH list, click the following link: http://listserv.dartmouth.edu/scripts/wa.exe?TICKET=NzM1NTA3IE0uZWxkb3JyeUBHTUFJTC5DT00gQU5DSUVOVC1GT09ELVRFQ0ggIJN4XhFd1Y6n&c=SIGNOFF -- Mennat-Allah El Dorry, MA Institut für Ägyptologie und Koptologie Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster "The future of Egypt is not just political reforms, but attitude reforms" ________________________________ To unsubscribe from the ANCIENT-FOOD-TECH list, click the following link: http://listserv.dartmouth.edu/scripts/wa.exe?TICKET=NzM1NTA4IHRrYXdhbWlAQVJUSFVSTVNBQ0tMRVJGRE4uT1JHIEFOQ0lFTlQtRk9PRC1URUNIIMuQhOcW%2F7Nj&c=SIGNOFF ######################################################################## To unsubscribe from the ANCIENT-FOOD-TECH list, click the following link: https://listserv.dartmouth.edu/scripts/wa.exe?SUBED1=ANCIENT-FOOD-TECH