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.
