This is a variant of a dish known as fāʾiziyya (فائزية) from 13th-century Aleppo, which requires boiling and cooking lamb. While the meat is on the hob, pound and strain sour cherries (an alternative to medlar or cornelian cherry) with mint. The resultant juice is added to rice as it is being cooked in the meat broth, and then sweetened with honey or sugar to taste. The rice is further cooked with some sheep’s tail fat (ألية, alya) until the mixture thickens. The lamb is served on a bed of the rice and cherries.
The Arabic culinary term for pilaf was aruzz mufalfal (أرز مفلفل), literally meaning ‘peppered rice’, in reference to the appearance of the grains of rice as separate grains. Pilafs are particularly associated with Mamluk cuisine, from both Syria and Egypt.
Another variation, from 13th-century Aleppo, on my favourite medieval dish, the jūdhāb (جوذاب; also jūdhāba/جوذابة ), which was Persian in origin but was already popular in Abbasid times and travelled all over the medieval Muslim world, as attested by the number of recipes in cookery books from Egypt, al-Andalus and Syria. It came in many guises but usually involved a chicken being roasted over a pudding made with layered bread, fruit, nuts, and sugar.
This particular recipe is quite unusual in that it is made with poppy seeds (خشخاش, khashkhāsh), which are mixed into a sugar syrup, alongside pistachios and saffron — one can add some honey as well (I didn’t , since one pound of sugar was quite sweet enough for me).
When the mixture has thickened, it is placed in between thin flatbreads – ruqāq (رقاق) – which are placed in the oven underneath a roasting plump chicken (also coloured with saffron), whose juices suffuse the pudding. The recipe calls for a tannūr (clay oven), but it is just as easy – and delicious in outcome – to use a conventional kitchen oven.
The contrast in both texture and flavours of the pudding with the chicken really ties things together.
This is a recreation of a simple, yet delicious, 13th-century dish from Aleppo, made with sour cherries, known in Arabic as qarāsiyā (قراصيا, قراسيا), a borrowing from the Greek kerasia (κεράσια), though the word could also refer to the cornelian cherry (Cornus mas). They were reported to grow in Syria and Egypt, and so it is no surprise that dishes requiring them are found in cookery books from those regions.
In this recipe, the chicken is not stewed as in the case of the very popular fruit stews (made with, for instance, quince, sour oranges or apples). Instead, it is fried in sesame oil before being added to the boiled cherries that have been thickened with sugar.
The use of some fresh mint adds a cooling lift, enhancing the aromatic complexity and bringing a refreshing final note. The sweet-and-sourness of the dish is typical of Aleppine cuisine, with the rich meatiness of fried chicken balanced by a tangy cherry glaze and enlivened by mint.
The sourness of the cherries is not too harsh, and the addition of sugar turns them into a syrup redolent of sour plum sauces like the Italian agrodolce or the Persian āloo sos (سس ألو). Today, qarāsiyā refers to a kind of plum in some dialects (e.g. Syria), while in Standard Arabic, the word for cherries is now karaz (كرز).
This is a recreation of a 13th-century dish from Aleppo, which was a hit in other parts as well since very popular dish since similar recipes can be found in Egyptian cookery books from the 14th and 15th centuries. It is called a bunduqiyya (بندقية), from the Arabic word bunduq (بندق), meaning ‘hazelnuts’, after the principal ingredient.
It is actually a variant of a dish made with pistachios known as fustuqiyya (فستقية , from فستق/fustuq, ‘pistachios). After boiling and frying a chicken, hazelnuts are pounded and added to thick rose-water syrup in which starch and honey are cooked to produce a thick creamy sauce. The fried chicken is then added to this and left for a little while, or, as per some recipes, simply dunked in the sauce before serving.
Hazelnuts were relatively rarely used in the medieval Arabic culinary literature, and are found mainly in Egyptian and Syrian cookery books. They are conspicuous by their absence from Abbasid cookery books and occur only once or twice in medieval Andalusi and North African recipes. They were generally toasted before use. In the same cookery book from which the recipe is taken, hazelnuts are said to be better and more beneficial for one’s health than almonds or walnuts. According to some physicians, hazelnuts increase sexual potency, while being beneficial for treating bites, especially when eaten with figs and rue, and against scorpion stings, not least because scorpions apparently fled at the sight of them.
The Arabic word for hazelnut, al-bunduqa (البندقة) came to be the word for meatballs in North African and Andalusi Arabic, in reference to their size. Later on, this became the Spanish word for meatball, albóndiga.
Another recipe by the Andalusian physician al-Zahrawi (d. 1013), whose name refers to his place of birth, the beautiful madinat al-Zahra’ (مدينة الزهراء), near Córdoba. This recipe is his version of a famous medieval dish, known as isfidhbāj (a word from Persian meaning ‘white stew’) because it was originally made with cheese. It was one of the dishes introduced to al-Andalus by Ziryab, and became known as tafāyā (تفايا). However, this particular variant is not so much a stew as chicken with a sauce.
The chicken is fried with olive oil — the recipe calls for so-called zayt al-unfāq (زيت الأنفاق), which is made from unripe olives –, good-quality salt, onion juice and coriander before being cooked with grape vinegar, pomegranate juice, boiled-down wine, and aromatics like cassia, cloves, spikenard, and pepper. The author included it among the dishes that are particularly useful for melancholics, but it has the added benefit of countering palpitations and tremors. Furthermore, he added that it was ‘tried and tested’. Surely, the right kind of dish for cold winter months when we can all need a boost.
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!
The medieval Andalusian cookery books reveal that its people were very partial to game, and there are several recipes for partridge, like this one from The Exile’s Cookbook. After skinning and cleaning the partridge, it is cooked in water, salt, olive oil, pepper, coriander, some onion, almonds, murrīand vinegar. When it is done, it is finished off in the oven together with the strained broth in which it was cooked. This dish is a must for game lovers!
A unique recipe from The Exile’s Cookbook and an Andalusian-North African variant of a medieval classic, the judhaba (جوذابة), a dish of Persian origin which in its Near Eastern iteration was a drip pudding, with a chicken being roasted over a fruit-layered pudding. In the Muslim West, the dish was subject to some dramatic changes and came in two guises, one without chicken and another with chicken buried in layers of flatbreads, which is recreated here.
A plump chicken with its breast split open is cooked with olive oil, salt, pepper, cinnamon, spikenard and cardamom until it is done, after which it is is again cooked in rose water until the liquid has completely evaporated. At this point, it is time to make the flabreads (رقاق, ruqāq), which will be used. The sides and bottom of a a new pot — stone or earthenware — are coated with pounded kidney suet, and then flatrbreads are spread on the bottom, making sure the edges hang over the sides of the pot as they will be used to cover others later.
After sprinkling on sugar, almonds, cloves, spikenard, rose water, camphor and olive oil, another flatbread (or two) are added, on which sugar, almonds, spices, rose water and olive oil are sprinkled. This layering continues until you reach half the height of the pot, which is when you add the chicken to the centre after having rubbed it with saffron dissolved in rose water. Then continue the layering as before until you reach the top of the pot. At this point, the flatbreads dangling over the sides of the pot are used as a cover and then the pot is covered with a lid and sealed with dough before baking until done.
Although the recipe does not specify this, the judhaba was tipped out of the pot maqluba style, simply because it was the easiest way to serve it without destroying this ‘wonderfully crafted dish, fit for kings’, as the author puts it. And on top of that it is very nutritious — as well as being very sweet!
In light of the similarities, this dish may be considered a precursor to the modern Moroccan basṭīla (بسطيلة), usually known in English as pastilla or bstila.
An unsual recipe from The Exile’s Cookbook for a stew with chicken meatballs and chestnuts, which are used as a sauce thickener. This is one of very few recipes requiring chestnuts, nearly all of them from the Andalusian collections, which contain two recipes each. Besides the chicken and fresh chestnuts (the author explains that one can use dried ones, too, but they have to be boiled first to soften them up), the recipe calls for coriander juice, salt, coriander seeds, pepper, onion juice and olive oil. The chestnuts are mashed and then added to the pot once the meatballs are done. Finally, a sprinkle of vinegar and — it’s an Andalusian recipe after all! — a layer of eggs to top the dish.
This is a wonderful recipe from ‘The Sultan’s Sex Potions‘, a book on aphrodisiacs, originally titled Kitāb albāb al-Bāhiyya wa ‘l-tarākīb al-sultāniyya (كتاب ألباب الباهية والتراكيب السلطانية, ‘The Book of Choice Sexual Stimulants and the Sultan’s Mixtures’) and authored by the famous astronomer Nasir al-Din al-Tusi (1201-1274), whose work on planetary theory inspired Copernicus.
The recipe is a variation on one made with sparrows. The pigeon meat is chopped into pea-sized pieces and then cooked through in chickpea water. Before serving, it is sprinkled with ginger, long pepper and cinnamon. It is eaten with unleavened bread, which is also made using chickpea water, ‘in the manner of the sages’, as the author informs us. A great dish for Valentine’s Day!
second half of the recipe in the British Library mss of the text
