A wonderful sweet-and-sour dish called masusiyya (مصوصية), from a 14th-century recipe collection compiled in Mamluk Egypt, but with clear Abbasid origins. It is made made with goat meat (though the author says some people used mutton), which is first boiled and then added with chopped onions, salt, spices, fresh mint, celery, garlic, aubergine, and vinegar. Finally, a mixture of pomegranate juice with quince juice is poured on in with sugar, and then spikenard, saffron, mastic and nutmeg.
In keeping with the elite character of the dish, it is also coloured with saffron. Both the masusiyya and a related dish known as masus (مصوص), which is found in a number of cookery books and goes back to the earliest Abbasid tradition. Both dishes are vinegar based, linked to the fact that the latter word meant ‘meat steeped and cooked in vinegar’, though both are related to the verb massa (مَصَّ), ‘to suck’.
