Two mediaeval Egyptian recipes from The Sultan’s Feast for sweets made from gourd, one resembling candy strings, and the other a pudding. The recipes simply call for ‘green sweet gourd’, and were recreated using the more unusual snake gourd. In both cases, the gourd pieces are boiled. The candied strings are made with sugar, honey and rose-water syrup, and garnished with crushed pistachios. The second dish has the consistency of the carrot khabis, and requires poppyseed essence, almond milk, sugar, starch, rose-water syrup, and sesame oil. If you are a purist or mediaevalist, then you should also flavour the sugar with musk.
Bringing Medieval Arab Cooking to Life
