Sour orange stews — known as nāranjiyya (نارنجية) after the word for ‘sour orange’, nāranj (today, they’re often also referred to as bu-safīr (بوصفير) or burtuqāl murr (برتقال مرّ, ‘bitter orange’) –were very popular in the medieval Arab culinary tradition and recipes can be found in multiple cookery books. This particular variety is from 13th-century Aleppo, and requires cooking a jointed chicken in sesame oil, chicken fat with onions, almonds and sour orange juice. The taste is enhanced by fresh mint, cinnamon, and mastic. It’s quite tangy so you might wish to sweeten it with sugar, but the author advises doing without since that is the way the dish should be done. Additionally, chefs are advised that the person peeling the sour oranges should not be the one extracting the juice!
