Time to feast

Tell our readers something about The Sultan’s Feast by the Egyptian scholar Ibn Mubarak Shah? What can they expect to find if they read it?

It’s a cookery book from 15th-century Egypt, which contains 332 recipes, most of them for dishes, both savoury and sweet, but there are also instructions for pickling, condiments, and even a few perfumes, breath sweeteners, and anti-nausea remedies. In short, everything one needs to enhance the meal experience.

Not a lot is known about the author, Ibn Mubarak Shah, except that in his day he was a well-known scholar and poet. He was not a chef and we can imagine a number of reasons why he wrote the book. Firstly, it was probably his own collection of favourite recipes, and he occasionally refers to dishes he had his cooks prepare. There are also very practical tips about replacing this or that ingredient with a cheaper one, or purchasing a ready-made one, just like you would expect from a contemporary cookery book. Secondly, there is an element of preserving a historical heritage as many of the recipes are reminiscent of the palace banquets of yore.

Why set yourself the task of translating this book? What attracted you to this challenge and how long did it take to complete?

It grew out of my passion for food, history and the Arab world. I had previously done research on medieval Islamic medicine and this, of course, is also full of references to food, which played a major role in medical treatment. From a historical perspective, the Arabic culinary tradition is among the oldest and richest in the world. Not only do the oldest cookery books pre-date those compiled in Europe by several centuries, the Arabic tradition stands out by the sheer number of recipes – over four thousand, across the surviving cookery books, spanning a period between the 10th and 15th centuries.

All in all, it took around five years to complete the project. It has been a very exciting journey, indeed, and included moving the manuscripts into the kitchen, so to speak, as we began to re-create dishes at home. In fact, this was very helpful as it taught me a lot about the inventiveness and proficiency of the medieval cooks, and, of course, brought the past to life in a very exciting way. I even started a blog to document the re-creations (eatlikeasultan.com).

When you were recreating the recipes, did you have a favourite?

Yes, many and there were a couple of disasters. Not as in cooking disasters, but a taste disaster. But there's many dishes that I greatly enjoy: the stews, the pomegranate, the fruits stews like the sour orange stew, lemon stew. There are many fantastic dishes.

I believe you also had a few unexpected surprises when working on the book?

My research into ‘The Sultan’s Feast’ also resulted in a few other unexpected bonuses. The first was the identification of an additional manuscript of a 13th-century cookery book, written by a Muslim from Spain. The second discovery was a far more exciting scoop, however, since it involved the discovery of a previously unknown cookery book, which not only increased the pool of recipes by a few hundred, but also sheds a new light on the development of the Arabic culinary tradition.

The biggest discovery, if I dare say, is this new cookery book and this came about – as these things happen – purely by accident. It was in a collection of pharmacological treatises in the British Library. I started reading because it mentioned food. And it turned out it's a new text. What makes it even more exceptional? If I look at the recipes, they are of the earliest cookery traditions. The types of recipes, the fact that it contains a lot of medical information which is part of that very early tradition; that interface between Galenic medicine, humoral theory and food. And the terminology that was really associated with the earliest texts, prior to the 13th century.

An interesting point about the manuscript was that it was written in the Maghrebi script, so it's written by a North Africa – or copied, I should say. Where it was copied, we don't know, and it's not dated. But this raises another very interesting point about the movement of text, the movement of dishes across the Mediterranean.

Were there any surprises or insights you can share that you came across while working on this book?

I think people may be surprised at how some things have endured down the centuries. For instance, in terms of the kitchen equipment, the different types of ovens tannur and furn still exist, even if they are no longer used to the same extent. There are also dishes that have hardly changed, like shishbarak, ka’ak, tharid, kishk, harissa, or zalabia. Others have been tweaked a bit over the centuries; the medieval sanbusak (samosa) was often sweet, rather than savoury, whereas kunafa was made with nuts (not cheese) and by cutting up crepe-like baked thin sheets of dough. The muhallabiyya is a particularly interesting case; today, it is a creamy sweet, but originally it was a rice pudding with meat!

On the other hand, it is quite interesting that many of the emblematic recipes of the Middle Ages did not withstand the test of time. I’m thinking especially about the stews, which probably make up the bulk of medieval dishes, and which are far less popular today in Arab cuisines. Another thing that springs to mind is the high proportion of dishes requiring vinegar, which was particularly pleasing to the medieval palate.

The biggest difference is, of course, the absence of ingredients introduced from the Americas as a result of the so-called Columbian Exchange, such as potatoes, tomatoes, bell peppers, chillis, etc. We don’t know how or when exactly these ingredients started to be used in Arab cooking since the last Arab cookery book to be produced before the 19th century predates Columbus’ departure. But even though these ingredients have significantly transformed Arab cooking, its original flavours have not been lost as many of the core spices of the past, such as ginger and coriander, continue to be used.

The Sultan’s Feast also reveals the cosmopolitan nature of medieval Arab cooking, with dishes travelling across the Muslim empire, and The Sultan’s Feast contains, for instance, a recipe for the North African couscous.