MEDIEVAL CAIRO - FOOD AND FOODWAYS - MEAT

THE CAIRENE MENU: INGREDIENTS, PRODUCTS AND PREPARATIONS

The multiplicity of possible approaches implies that the foodstyle of a culture can be discussed in a number of ways, ranging from historical and economic to social and anthropological. In the case of the present study, two modes of presentation seemed to be more fitting than others. One involved following a nineteenth-century manual titled 'Notes and Queries on Anthropology' which contains a huge set of instructions in the form of a complex questionnaire, meant to guide anthropologists in their field work. The questionnaire, proposed by a Committee of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, and recently rediscovered by Peter Heine, covered all possible aspects of human life, food culture included. The appropriate section, arranged according to areas such as “foodstuffs and their preparation,” “presentation and storage of food,” “cooking,” “condiments,” “prescribed and forbidden foods,” “exceptional foods,” etc., provides a researcher with convenient guidelines for investigation.
Investigating a complex and multifaceted medieval Cairene food culture from the anthropologists’ perspective means, however, depriving the study of its historical, political, and some of the social contexts. Besides, such an approach would inevitably involve countless repetitions. Cheese, for example, would have to be considered first in the category of foods that were eaten fresh, then of those that were cooked, then of those eaten cold, then of those eaten hot/warm. Furthermore, it should also be discussed in a section dealing with milk and forms of its preservation as well as in a section dealing with salted preserves—to mention only the most obvious of cheese’s possible classifications. In effect, one might fail to discuss its varieties, its social standing, or its popularity as a menu item.
Another possible way of arranging the research would be to follow the order of some of the medieval Arabic cookery books. The recipes presented in Arabic cookbooks are often organized according to a similar scheme, though particular works differ in details. In the case of Kitab Wasf al-A'tima al-Mu'tada (“The Book of Description of Familiar Foods”), for example, the chapters include:
1. sour dishes (hawamid) and their varieties;
2. simple/plain dishes (sawadh); 3. fried dishes (qalaya) and dry dishes (nawashif);
4. porridges (hara'is) and oven dishes (tannuriyyat)
5. fried dishes (mutajjanat), cold dishes (bawarid), and samosas (sanbusik);
6. fish (samak), both fresh and salted;
7. vinegar pickles (mukhallat), relishes (saba'igh), and condiments (mutayyibat);
8. puddings (jawadhib and akhbisa);
9. sweetmeats (halawat);
10. pancakes (qata'if) and biscuits (khushkananaj, etc.);
11. digestive beverages (hadimat);
12. dishes for the sick and dishes eaten by the Christians during the Lent.
Such an arrangement, apparently natural for the medieval Arab cooks and consumers, and probably attractive for an experimenter-cook of today as well, does not, however, seem to make much sense as a framework for research. Differentiating between the dishes according to their being or not being sour, and then, concurrently, dividing others according to the style of frying, etc., would not only confuse the reader, but also make it impossible for the researcher to make clear and systematic comments about a culinary culture which invented and practiced this approach.
At the same time, constructing the study according to chronological order was out of the question, if only because following the chronology of over five hundred years history of a complex culinary culture does not make much sense. Nor was it possible to apply the sociologically-oriented research questions suggested by Richard M. Mirsky in his “Perspectives in the Study of Food Habits.” Finally, organizing the study according to food courses was also unfeasible, as in the medieval Arabic-Islamic food culture there was generally no tradition of distinguishing between what we know as starters, soups, main courses, desserts, etc., let alone of serving meals according to different groups of foodstuffs.
Under such circumstances, the only way to make the inquiry and its presentation relatively clear and effective was to organize it according to main food categories. In other words, to combine the pattern applied in the food science with that which guides authors who write on the lore of the kitchen. In effect, the food of medieval Cairo will be discussed according to the following order:
1. Cereals:
A. Millet and sorghum;
B. Barley;
C. Rice;
D. Wheat
2. Meat
3. Fowls and eggs
4. Fish
5. Dairy products

The scheme not only makes it possible to investigate in an orderly way what the ordinary Cairenes of the Middle Ages actually ate, but also to reveal various historical contexts of their menu. It also allows one to answer a number of questions which are so important from the anthropologists’ perspective, such as whether a given substance was eaten fresh or raw, warm or cold, or whether it was customized to the local tastes and needs by means of drying, salting, fermenting, or preserving. Furthermore, such a scheme makes it possible to allude to the batterie de cuisine and the techniques of food preparation and allows one to mention what was proscribed. Wherever the names of plants or fishes may raise doubts or be considered confusing, Latin names of species are given.

2. Meat

“The lordiest food of the people of this world and of Paradise is meat,” the Prophet is alleged to have said. Indeed, with Islam positively encouraging meat-eating, it probably should not be surprising that in the Arabic-Islamic world meatless food was not considered a real meal. The superior value accorded to meat did not mean, however, that in the cuisine of this generally carnivorous food culture meat played the role of primary staple. True, many historical records indicate that meat was an important element of the Cairenes’ daily diet and suggest a relatively high consumption of it. It is enough to mention countless remarks of both Western and Arab eyewitnesses referring to meat and meat dishes sold in the city streets. At the same time, however, a number of foreigners who visited Egypt in pre-modern times noted that the Egyptians did not eat too much meat, while others pointed out that in the hot summertime the meat dishes were not really sought after. There was no universal pattern for meat consumption in medieval Cairo. It varied not only according to the season of the year but also according to social class. Eliyahu Ashtor, who tried to establish how much meat medieval Egyptian workers, artisans, and shopkeepers could buy with a minimum salary, found out—not surprisingly—that in the fifth/eleventh and eighth/fourteenth centuries laborers with the lowest salary were not able to buy enough meat to supply necessary proteins and fats. At the same time, Ashtor’s research shows—not surprisingly—that the better-off segment of population, including specialized workers, petty merchants, etc., did not share the concerns of their poorer compatriots.Indeed, Judar, the fictitious Cairene fisherman featured in one of the Arabian Nights narratives, could earn enough to buy meat for four persons every day. In his calculations, however, Ashtor apparently did not consider the type of meat, a factor which fundamentally conditioned the price and, therefore, the availability of meat. Those who enjoyed appropriate means would go for mutton, the most expensive meat in the market, and would rather not eat beef, goat, or camel meat.At the same time, however, the low-paid laborers who could not afford a nice mutton fillet, were not necessarily meat- or protein-hungry. In fact, many of them seem to have been able to satisfy their appetites with a cheap dish of cooked sheep+s heads/trotters or with camel, buffalo, or goat flesh.
As already mentioned, the meat available in the city markets had its hierarchy. Mutton was absolutely superior to all other kinds and its position was unmatched. Beef came second, while goat meat was for those who could not afford beef. But the Cairenes’ choice was not limited to those kinds. One could also have camel, buffalo, and horse meat, which, however, were excluded from the menu of the respectable urbanites. Camel meat and buffalo meat, presumably regarded as suitable for peasants and Bedouins, were placed below goat meat in the local meat hierarchy. In effect, they were also cheap enough to be affordable for the better-of the city’s poor. As for horse meat, the Mamluks’ special, its consumption was out of the question for the local civilian population. Of the remaining kinds of meat, there were also, albeit occasionally, game animals, mostly gazelle, hunted for pleasure by the rich and by the poor out of necessity. The hierarchy of meat as observed by the Cairenes could, at least partly, be a consequence of some ancient beliefs and nutritional habits, of both local and foreign provenience. At the same time, however, the reason why medieval Cairene urbanites categorized meat this way seems to have been related to the dietary lore absorbed by the medieval Islamic world as a part of the Greek medical doctrine.  According to the dietary treatise written by the philosopher-dietician Ishaq al-Isra'ili, meats were divided into two categories. Mutton, goat meat, and beef made one category, while donkey, horse, mule, and camel meat belonged to the other (water-buffalo is not mentioned at all). The most obvious difference between the two categories was that one of them included riding/pack beasts, while the other consisted of animals which were farmed for their meat and/or milk.  The difference was absolutely crucial, as the working animals were not grazed on opened pastures but were kept in stables and fed artificially. Moreover, they were butchered not when they gained weight or age which classified them as appropriate for consumption, but because they grew old or sick enough to be unsuitable for work. From dietary point of view, meat of such animals was of inferior quality, both in taste and with regard to health concerns. But the hierarchy of meat was not always one and the same in Egypt. The millennia-long and complex history of local meat consumption included a number of turning points. As far as its medieval period was concerned, the Arab conquest of the early 20s/640s was probably the most meaningful. The consequences of the post-conquest reevaluation of meat consumption were manifold. One of them was the shift from proscribing sheep to making mutton the most desired meat. The other was the shift from the consumption of pork to its prohibition. These two phenomena entirely changed the ranking which had been applied in ancient Egypt: beef, in antiquity apparently the meat of the elites, now gave its place to mutton and in turn occupied the place of pork which up to that time had been the meat of the more common people. Not surprisingly, pork was not much coveted in medieval Cairo. The story of its consumption in Egypt is, nevertheless, intriguing, if only because pork never quite disappeared from medieval records. In fact, a total avoidance of pork as brought by the Arab-Muslim conquerors in form of the Qur"anic ban (the Muslims simply picked up the Jewish taboo) was for the Egyptians a rather new experience. In the Pre-Dynastic period, pork was consumed in great quantities in Lower Egypt. In Pharaonic Egypt, pork was avoided only periodically. As for the Post-Dynastic, or Graeco-Roman period, the evidence is rather confusing.  Some authors, like Plutarch, maintain it was abhorred. Others, like Pliny or Athenaeus, report on large herds of farmed swine and on popular consumption of pork. This inconsistency notwithstanding, some scholars are of the opinion that pork was by that time “the standard meat of Egypt” consumed by both the army and the civilians. The situation might have remained unchanged under the Byzantine occupation; in fact, there is no ground to claim that in the period directly preceding the Islamic conquest the Egyptian Christians, either Copts or Melkites, avoided pork consumption.

The Arab conquest initiated new attitudes. It must have taken some time, however, before the Qur"anic bans became accepted countrywide. If we are to believe al-Muqaddasi’s mocking words, in fourth/tenth-century Egypt one could still encounter pig herds.The Muslim conquerors apparently did not particularly press the local population to exterminate pigs, nor did they impose pork avoidance on Egyptian Christians.Since pork, unlike the religiously forbidden wine, was fervently and voluntarily abhorred by the Muslims, there was no real need to activate propaganda against the pig sties or pig rearers.  The Egyptian Christians, however, seem to have accepted the Islamic pork restrictions in a somewhat spontaneous way, be it because of the general disgust which prevailed towards this kind meat or because the Islamic pork avoidance fitted some earlier local tradition of which we have no knowledge.The acceptance of pork avoidance by Egyptian Christians could have taken place ca. fourth/tenth century, when the local Christian-Muslim contacts and interactions intensified due to increased Arabization and the slow but ongoing Islamization of Egypt.
In fact, the Arabic-Islamic records referring to pork consumption in medieval Cairo are extremely scarce and, due to their hearsay character, do not provide a reliable answer as to whether pork was eaten at all or not. As for horse meat, the story of its consumption in Cairo is not less peculiar. In the end of the eighth/fourteenth century, a Florentine Simone Sigoli, otherwise a not very trustworthy observer, maintained he saw “horse, donkey and camel flesh, cooked and raw” sold in Alexandria in “appointed places.”Two points are intriguing in his remark: one, that horse and donkey meat was sold in Alexandria at all; and two, that meat of riding/pack animals was sold in places other than the regular butchers’ shops.
Actually, similar places might have existed in Cairo, too; however, they seem insufficiently documented. Nevertheless, horse meat was consumed in Cairo, but the phenomenon was generally limited to the Mamluk milieu.It is probably impossible to confirm whether this dietary habit was practiced by all groups of the Mamluk society. The records with evidence of the horse meat consumption refer only to festive occasions celebrated by Mamluk elite circles of both the Bahri and the Circassian epoch. As for eating of horse meat by the rank-and-file mamluks, it seems rather improbable that the daily meat rations received by them could include this kind of fare. Leo Africanus pointed out that although eating of horse meat was, due to the Hanafi doctrine to which they subscribed, religiously permitted for the Turks (i.e. Mamluks in Egypt), it was not a popular custom among them. It is difficult to define whether Africanus’s remark referred to the early tenth/sixteenth century only, or was valid for the Mamluk state in general. In the Mamluk state, horses were in high demand—the Mamluk army needed such quantities that Syria, Lower Egypt, and Upper Egypt could not provide enough of them. Great numbers were imported from outside Egypt, mostly from Bahrain, Barqa in Cyrenaica, and the Maghreb.The horse in Egypt (and in the Arab world in general) was never bred for meat. Nevertheless, considering quantities of horses stationed in the capital and the intensive way they were used, some animals must have from time to time been butchered when useless due to sicknesses or wounds.
Quite probably, this was the only source of horse meat. As for camel meat, its share in the Cairene culinary culture cannot be clearly defined. Actually, it is certain that camels abounded in Cairo, if only because tens of thousands of these animals were used to provide the city with potable water which they transported from the Nile, as well as to carry goods and merchandise of all possible kinds. Moreover, it can also be taken for granted that the city market was well supplied in camel’s meat. It hung in the bazaars in rows, while Cairene cooks, apart from sheep’s flesh and beef, apparently cooked also camel’s flesh. Yet, it seems that camel meat was not a favorite among the city’s inhabitants.  Possibly the attitude of the Cairenes was not very much different from that of the Egyptian Copts visiting the Arab camp of the victorious Amr Ibn al-As soon after the conquest. Treated by the Arabs with a coarse dish of camel meat cooked in water and salt, the Copts could not hide their disgust. This, by the way, might support the thesis of William Darby, according to whom camel “seems never to have been eaten in Egypt before the Arab invasion.” As for the times after the invasion, camel meat was apparently ignored by the urbanites of means as an unhealthy fare of the Bedouins and never found its way to any of the Arabic-Islamic cookbooks or tables. Due to its low price, however, camel meat must have attracted numerous clientele in Cairo, mostly among the poorer part of the city’s population. Although goat is not a working animal, its meat was rather unpopular, possibly because of its “unpalatable smell.” The Arabic-Islamic cookery books rarely recommended goat meat as an ingredient. The exceptions included a recipe for “[something] tasteful” (maliha), as well as a few dishes which called for meat of the suckling kid ( jady). The major evidence for its actual consumption in medieval Cairo are probably the hisba manuals whose authors instruct the butchers to mark goat meat with saffron and avoid mixing it with other meats.Goat meat—like camel meat, sheep+s heads or trotters cooked in the market—was the food of those with meager income. Or, to paraphrase the words of the author of the Delectable War, it was the food of the poor who, having finally found a source of income, could afford at least the cheap meat of goat. Historical evidence referring to buffalo meat and its consumption in medieval Cairo is somewhat vague. Interestingly, this applies to accounts which refer not only to Egypt, but also to medieval Arab sources in general. This absence of records may mean that either buffalo meat was classified by the contemporaneous authors as beef and, consequently, was recorded as such, or that it was consumed by the Arabic-Islamic world—medieval Egyptian urbanites included—on an insignificant scale, if at all.
Water-buffalo or, more precisely, river buffalo (jamus), an animal so typical of the Nile valley landscape of today, appeared in Egypt only after the Arab conquest. In the Middle Ages the Egyptian water-buffalo, although generally distinguished from cow, was sometimes confused with it. This resulted, most probably, from the fact that the Arabic word for “cows,” or baqar, designates also “bovines/cattle.” It not impossible, then, that meat of buffalo, considered “a kind of cow,” sold in markets as beef. The meat of the water-buffalo is fully comparable with beef and often passed off as such in certain regions of the world. At the same time, however, it cannot be excluded that for most of the Middle Ages jamus was bred in Egypt for its highly appreciated milk—“the most delicious of all kinds of milk, and the fattest”—and not for its rather tough meat which required long cooking. In the eighth/fourteenth century one could still observe that “the herdsmen [called] each buffalo by its name, which it [knew] and [came] for milking when called by it.” In the eighth/fourteenth century, then, jamus was clearly not bred for meat. The slaughtering of it might have been occasional: it is possible that only useless or old animals were butchered. Actually, it seems that one of the first mentions of buffalo meat consumption in the Egyptian context dates back only to the early tenth/sixteenth century, when Leo Africanus noted down that “buffalo meat with a lot of vegetables” was a popular component of the local diet. Buffalo meat was also mentioned by a number of later visitors to Egypt. Christophe Harant observed that Cairene cooks, apart from lamb and camel meat, also sold buffalo meat.Antonius Gonzales, noted down that poor people ate buffalo meat, and sometimes camel meat.
Unlike jamus, the regular cow was domesticated in late Pre-Dynastic times and by the Middle Ages it already had a long record in the history of Egyptian fauna and, consequently, of Egyptian food culture as well. The long-horned variety, which prevailed in more ancient times, disappeared under the New Kingdom. Possibly the short-horned cattle which replaced it was the same breed of cow which prevailed among the cattle farmed in Egypt in the Middle Ages.The meat of these animals was, according to the dietary lore, unpleasant to eat, difficult to digest, and obstructive for the stomach. It could be relatively harmless only when prepared of a “very young animal, and cooked in vinegar, rue, mint, celery, leaves of Citron medica (utrujj), coriander, saffron and some sugar. ” Indigestible as it was thought to have been, beef was not as despised as camel meat, nor as expensive as mutton; neither was it as bad as goat meat (moreover, it tasted quite good to a foreigner).As such, it sold well throughout the Middle Ages. However, although occasionally served on festive tables of the Mamluk elite,beef does not seem to have been too popular among the elites.

The top of the Cairene meat hierarchy was invariably occupied by mutton. Interestingly, the taste of mutton was almost unknown in ancient Egypt where sheep, due to religious veneration, were rarely killed. This sheep-revering attitude seems to have been still alive in the Graeco-Roman period. The change from proscribing mutton to recognizing it as the most coveted and fashionable food item must have taken place either in the Byzantine period or, which is more likely, some time after the Arab conquest. The Abbasid era seems the most probable dating, as it coincided with the time when both the Arabic-Islamic medicine and Arabic-Islamic cuisine spread throughout the Islamic domains to promote the consumption of mutton. The dieticians left no room for doubts: mutton was healthy and easiest for digestion, while other kinds of meat were detrimental, particularly if consumed by the sick. Whether for such recommendations or for its particular taste qualities, the fact is that mutton became at some point recognized as the best of meats in the Arabic-Islamic (as well as Jewish) medieval food culture. As such, it also became expensive, fashionable, and coveted. The demand grew with time, so much so that the domestic production became insufficient. Herds had to be imported from Cyrenaica to meet the needs of the Egyptian market. The prevailing medieval breed, renowned for its long and broad tail and long ears, was described by a number of European travelers who visited Egypt in the late ninth/fifteenth century and who appreciated delicious taste of the local mutton. Mutton invariably ruled on the festive tables of the elites. Yet, it was by no means as chic as today’s oysters, as rare as truffles, or as snobbish as the Beluga caviar. Prized as the King of Foods and appreciated by the elites, it was not necessarily synonymous with luxury and wealth. One could simply buy it in the street, fresh, roasted, or cooked, in the form of joints or of ready to eat one-pot cookery dishes.  Moreover, there were times when mutton was a part of soldiers’ pay, and when “a middle-class person with a monthly income of 300 dirhams (calculated on the basis of 10 dirhams per day)...could buy, for example, with these 10 [silver] dirhams, 3 ratls of mutton for 2 [silver] dirhams, the necessary seasonings for 2 [silver] dirhams, and for 4 [silver] dirhams he [could] purchase food for his children, family, and servants, if any.” But, doubtlessly, mutton was not every Cairene’s daily fare. The Arabic-Islamic recipes of the Near East generally did not specify what type of meat should be used in a given preparation. Apparently, this was not necessary as mutton must have been implicit in most of the meat dishes.The author of The Description of the Familiar Foods (Wasf), for example, provided this kind of information on two instances only. One is the recipe for masusiyya, where it is indicated that the dish “is made from meat of the suckling kid and some people make it with mutton.”  The other is the recipe for a dish called tannuriyya, in which lamb or veal are recommended. At the same time, only five recipes of the entire collection included in Kanz specify the required kind of meat. These are the recipe for a porridge called harisa, for the preparation of which beef is recommended; the recipe for qamhiyya dish, in which beef is mentioned as an option for mutton; the recipe for mawziyya, or “banana dish,” which calls for meat of fat sheep; and the recipe for al-kharuf al-mamzuj, or “mixed [here probably ‘flavored’] lamb,” which calls for a whole sheep. The most interesting of this group is, however, a recipe for “[something] tasteful” (maliha) or a rather unusual preparation made of red (i.e. lean) goat meat which, precooked and seasoned with spices, was immersed in a mixture of broth beaten with raw eggs and cooked in the oven. The kind of meat was not the only detail which the majority of recipes ignored. What was not mentioned either were the preferred cuts of meat. Possibly, the cuts generally did not matter too much. There were, however, exceptions, which included the recipe for filling of famous bazmaward “sandwiches,” in which well-done roast meat from the ribs was recommended. Furthermore, there were recipes which called for sheep's heads or trotters, and those in which livers or intestines were required. Such recipes were, however, very few: it seems that heads, giblets/offal, etc. were not particularly favored among the urban elites. If anybody fancied this kind of food, though, there were specialized cooks in the Cairene markets who offered cooked sheep+s heads or livers roasted with spices in the tannur oven. Guts were used, above all, for making sausages of the sukhtur kind, stuffed with meat, rice, chickpeas and seasoned with Chinese cinnamon, mastic, and other spices, or of the naqaniq type, made by the street cooks out of meat, onions, spices, and seasonings.  It seems there was no preparation comparable to contemporary European style tripe dish, although one late-Mamluk source mentions a dish called jaghal maghal, which the editor of the source identifies as “tripe.” Bones were not appreciated, either. Butchers and street cooks of Cairo, like those of Alexandria, sold boneless meat. The practice must have been unknown in Europe of that time where, apparently, people were obliged to buy whole joints. Simone Sigoli, who visited Egypt in the eighth/fourteenth century, did not try to hide his appreciation: “and when you go to the butcher’s,” he wrote down in his travel account, “he will give you boneless meat, for such is the custom, and even if you buy it cooked from the cook, he too will give it to you boneless; if you however wish the bone, you may have it.”  Indeed, very few recipes of the Arabic-Islamic cuisine call for undeboned meat. But bones were not really needed—in the majority of the preparations meat was cut up small or pounded in a stone mortar. True, the tasty bone marrow was sometimes difficult to resist; since, however, sucking a bone at the table was not a proper thing to do, bones never became a sought after delicacy in the Arabic-Islamic culture comparable, for example, to Italian osso bucco. If anybody loved the taste of marrow, or enjoyed sucking bones, it was clearly considered more civilized to use fake ones, prepared of liver and sheep’s tail fat stuffed into copper tubes. Even if the cuts did not really matter, not everything was left to the cook’s discretion as far as the proper choice of meat was concerned.  First, whatever kind of meat was finally used, it was generally “desirable that meat be from young animals which graze on suitable grasses and are healthy in body.” What the cook should also consider was the distinction between lean and fat meat. Judging from the recipes this difference mattered, for there were dishes which required fat meat and there were those for which lean cuts were needed. From the dieticians’ point of view, “the less fatty was the meat, the better,” as lean meat “was less viscid, faster to digest, and better for the stomach.” Nothing indicates, however, that this was a commonly followed recommendation: the recipes called for fat meat not less often than for lean one. Besides, even if a given preparation was made of lean meat (ahmar; hazil), in the end it was not necessarily a low-fat food: in a considerable number of meat dishes, the melted fat of the sheep’s tail was used as an ingredient. Before the meat was cooked, it had to be cleaned. In theory, first it was to be washed “in hot/warm water and salt and then cleaned of ganglions, veins, and membranes.”However, simple washing of meat did not make it absolutely clean. The remaining dirt, gathered in the form of  “froth, scum, grease, and whatever might float upon it during boiling,” was removed when meat was already in the pot. Dirt and veins were not the only unwanted elements the meat could contain. Sometimes, one also had to get rid of bad smell, a problem which was particularly troublesome in places like Cairo, with its hot climate and well-supplied meat market. How to keep meat fresh, and what to do at the end of the day with the unsold part of the merchandise were the questions which the city butchers and food dealers must have faced every day. Naturally enough, some of them cheated the customers in order to get rid of bad or old meat. If, however, a customer proved naïve enough to be fooled in the butcher’s shop, he/she still could resort to means which would save the not-sofresh meat. Contrary to what might be expected, this was not done by the excessive use of spices. In order to get rid of bad smell, the Cairene chef would rather cook meat with hazelnuts, or “empty an egg into the pot,” or use fenugreek (hulba), one of the most basic ingredients in all Indian curry mixes, but relatively rare in the Arabic-Islamic cuisine. There were also other ways. As an anonymous author advised his reader: “if you want to improve meat which smells bad, pound some fenugreek, moisten meat with it and wrap it in a piece of woolen fabric; then take a pot, fill it with water and boil it well. Then put the wrapped meat into the pot and let it boil in the water for a while.”  Any culinary preparation could be made of meat “refreshed” this way. In fact, the woolen wrapper was not absolutely necessary and it seems that to improve the bad-smelling meat one could simply boil it with fenugreek and then change the water. The effect was so good that after the operation “no one could recognize whether it was fresh or putrid.” In the Arabic-Islamic medieval urban cuisine, meat could be prepared by frying, roasting, baking, or cooking in the oven. Jerked meat, almost absent from the cookery books, clearly was not the food of the city people. In fact, the cookery books do not mention plain roasted or fried meat too often either, but, as a contemporary scholar indicated, such dishes must have been more widespread than recipes suggest. The most popular method of cooking meat seems to have been “the ‘stew’ or ‘casserole’ preparation where the ingredients were cooked in liquid in a pot over the heat of a fire.” Indeed, the recipes for stews definitely prevailed in the cookery books. This could have been caused by a number of reasons. First, the local climate did not allow one to tenderize the carcasses by hanging them for a few days, as done in colder countries. Some cookbooks instructed the cooks to “let meats age overnight to ripen,” yet one night might not have been enough to make meat sufficiently tender. Actually, mincing meat into a fine paste (in order to cook it, for instance, rolled into balls) solved the problem of making fresh and tough meat softer and more palatable. An easier and more popular way was to subject meat to slow and steady simmering, or stewing. Stewing had other practical advantages, too. Unlike in the case of grilled or roasted meat, in stews meat could be combined in one dish with vegetables, legumes, and rice.

This significantly reduced the problems related to the wastage of fuel, always extremely scarce in Cairo, and to the necessity of washing additional pots in costly water transported from the Nile River. In the Arabic-Islamic cookery books, the stews were sometimes divided into the so-called hawamid, or sour meat stews, and sawadh, “plain” or non-sour stewed dishes. The souring ingredients were the most obvious, though not the only element distinguishing the sour stews from “plain” ones. In sour preparations, meat (fat or unspecified) was cut up into medium or small pieces, thrown into a pot, and covered with water.
Then salt was usually added and everything was brought to boil. After the scum was removed, vegetables (mostly eggplant, carrots, colocasia, or chickpeas) and spices were added—sometimes only a part of what the recipe called for, at other times all of it. Although it was suggested that the cook be moderate with spices in the case of sour dishes as these had “their own broth,”the recommended seasoning composition was, nevertheless, quite fragrant. Mint was almost de rigeur in it, while Chinese cinnamon, coriander, pepper, ginger, mastic, and saffron were also common. Of alliums onions prevailed, while garlic and leeks were used from time to time. At this stage, meatballs of pounded meat (kubab), sesame oil or, less frequently, sheep’s tail fat, could also be thrown in. Then the preparation was left to “boil until it stewed.” When the dish was nearly done, it could be thickened with rice or starch and improved with additional ingredients, such as remaining spices or vegetables (if there were any left), sweetening agents (sugar or syrup), almonds or nuts. What was particularly important, the souring agents, such as pomegranate seeds, lemon juice, sour fruits, sumac, vinegar, or verjuice were then added to the pot. Quite often, the ready dish was sprinkled with rose-water. The interesting feature regarding the hawamid recipes was that their authors often recommended wiping the sides of the pot, which suggests that the finished dishes were served in the cooking pots.
The most typical for the hawamid or sour category were probably dishes such as sikbaj (a sweet-sour dish made of fat meat, onions, leeks, carrots, eggplant, almonds, jujubes, dried figs, and raisins; seasoned with Chinese cinnamon, dry coriander, and other spices, it was thickened with starch or rice, and sprinkled with rose-water); zirbaj (a sweet-sour dish made of fat meat and/or chicken, chickpeas and almonds, seasoned with Chinese cinnamon, coriander, pepper, mastic, and saffron, and scented with rose-water);tabahaja (strips of meat fried in oil with onion, celery, colocasia, and bunches of fresh mint, seasoned with saffron, dry coriander, cumin, caraway, Chinese cinnamon, ginger, and murri sauce); madira (a dish made of fat meat, onions, leeks, and yoghurt, improved with melted sheep’s tail fat and seasoned with Chinese cinnamon and coriander; sometimes also cumin, mastic, salted lemon and fresh mint could be added), as well as various fruity meat preparations: naranjiyya “bitter orange dish”, rummaniyya “pomegranate dish”, hummaniyya “citron dish”, tuffahiyya “apple dish”, mishmishiyya “apricot dish” etc. As for sawadh, or “plain,” non-sour stews, some of them were cooked in a manner similar to sour stews. Meat (either fat or unspecified) was first cut up, then thrown into the pot, covered with water, and so forth.  Most of sawadh, however, differed from hawamid as far as both ingredients and modes of preparation were concerned. As for ingredients, souring agents, not surprisingly, disappeared from non-sour stews. But so did mint, rosewater, saffron, ginger, and fruits. Sweetening agents and nuts were added only occasionally, if at all, and onion was used much less frequently than in hawamid. Instead, rice appeared in many sawadh preparations, most of which called for the sheep’s tail fat, too. Legumes, particularly chickpeas, became the dominant vegetables while Chinese cinnamon and coriander remained the most important spices; mastic and, though to a lesser degree, cumin, were also quite often used. Differences in composition accompanied changes in the cooking technique: unlike in sour stews, meat in non-sour dishes was often stewed or stir-fried with spices first, either in tail fat or in sesame oil, and only then covered with water.  After the scum and froth had been removed from the surface of boiling broth, chickpeas or/and washed rice were added to it. Like in the case of sour stews, the preparation was then left on a gentle fire to settle. In some dishes, such as the renowned aruzz mufalfal, rice was cooked separately with melted sheep’s tail fat and spices, either in milk or in water and, when nearly done, pieces of stewed meat were arranged on the top of it. Then the pot was covered and the preparation left until settled. In other dishes meat, with part of the spices and vegetables, was stewed until the water evaporated. Then the remaining part of the spices and vegetables was thrown into the pot, and everything was covered with water. This was, for example, the case of mutawakkiliyya, a dish known for having been prohibited, in the late fourth/tenth century, by the Fatimid caliph al-Hakim. As far as the manner of serving sawadh is concerned, there was no uniform rule. Judging upon the recipes which recommended wiping the sides of the cooking pot, in some cases the preparations were served straight from the pot. Some dishes, however, were supposed to be ladled to serving bowls. In contemporary lore of the kitchen, the meaning of fried food is relatively obvious. It is understood as food prepared either by sautéing, that is cooking in heated fat in a wide, shallow frying pan, or by deep-frying, that is immersing foods in a large, deep pan of boiling fat. The precooking of food which is to be fried is practiced only occasionally and in general does not concern meat but croquets, pancakes, and the like. This seemingly universal definition is not, however, valid for the art of frying as practiced in the medieval Arabic-Islamic cuisine, if only because its cooks rarely fried non-precooked meat. But there were other peculiarities, too. A medieval Cairene, like majority of the Arabic-Islamic urban consumers, was offered two basic kinds of fried preparations: qalaya and mutajjanat. The two terms reflected, in theory at least, not only the two different cooking methods, but also two different kinds of vessels used in the process of cooking.  Logically enough, one tends to understand that the qalaya dishes were fried in a pan called miqla, made of copper, pottery, iron, or soapstone, while the mutajjanat were cooked in a somewhat larger vessel called tajin, which was made of tinned copper, soapstone or red pottery. However, the rationale of Arabic morphology tends to be misleading in the case of frying vessels—enough to mention a recipe for bayd mutajjan (sautéed eggs) in which the cook is advised to use the miqla, and not the tajin-type of pan. Or vice versa: in a recipe for bayd maqli eggs are to be fried not in the miqla, but in the tajin-type of pan. Moreover, in his instructions for chefs, one of the authors of Wusla recommended that for making fried qalaya dishes small pots should be used; miqla pans were in this case not named at all. And, indeed, in most of the recipes for dishes categorized as qalaya, a qidr-cooking pot, and not a miqla-pan, is mentioned. Apparently, the pan, very useful for frying eggs or fish, was probably of little use for preparing dishes which, although known as “fried,” were in fact cooked according to rules comparable to those applied in stewed preparations. In most cases, in the qalaya dishes both lean and fat meat was used. First, fat (or unspecified) meat, either pounded or cut up into small pieces, was boiled in water. After the scum was removed, meatballs made of spiced lean meat and spices were thrown in. Sometimes some vegetables, mostly chickpeas and spinach, were also added. Spices were to be used generously in this kind of dishes —the composition usually included Chinese cinnamon, coriander, saffron, onions, spice mix, occasionally also ginger, pepper, and mastic. Sometimes, a souring ingredient was also put in. When the water evaporated (or was removed) the fat of the sheep’s tail was added and only then the preparation was fried.  Qalaya, or “fried dishes,” could also be cooked in a reverse order: small cuts of meat were first stir-fried in fat until lightly brown and only then covered with water and brought to boil, together with meatballs and spices which at this instance usually were also thrown in. The qalaya were either served in a cooking vessel, i.e. in a pan or pot the sides of which were wiped with cloth, or were ladled out into the bowls. According to an old Baghdadi rule, the technological difference between qalaya and mutajjanat was clear: in mutajjanat meat was boiled before frying, while in qalaya it was not. Interestingly, in the medieval Cairene cuisine this rule often worked the other way round: judging by the recipes, many of the dishes prepared of the pre-boiled meat were in fact categorized as qalaya, and not as mutajjanat.  This was not always so, however, and most of the remaining mutajjanat preparations, non-uniform as they were, matched the Baghdadi definition. A group of these dishes involved recipes which recommended meat of suckling kid. This was to be cut up into joints, then boiled lightly in vinegar, taken out, dried, and fried in sesame oil. The ready preparation was flavored with spices: Chinese cinnamon, coriander, pepper, mastic, caraway and mint were most frequently added. Vinegar, if not used for parboiling, was added to sesame oil in which the meat was fried. Another group of dishes typical for the mutajjanat included various stuffings, meat spreads, and meatballs, the cooking of which generally agreed with the Baghdadi definition of the category. For example, the making of stuffing for eggplants involved boiling pounded meat (preferably lean) in sumac water, then taking it up from the pot, drying, and sprinkling with seasonings which, in this case, included dry mint, dry coriander, pepper, caraway, mastic and Chinese cinnamon. The ready paste was stuffed into eggplants which were subsequently fried in sesame oil. A similar procedure was applied in the case of the so-called sanbusiks, or samosas made of flatbread cut into triangles which, stuffed with meat paste, were sealed with dough and deep-fried in sesame oil. The making of meatballs also involved the parboiling of meat paste and its subsequent frying.  In this case, the paste—prepared by boiling pounded lean meat and mixing it with pounded pistachios, seasonings, and beaten eggs—was simply formed into meatballs and fried in sesame oil. Although omelettes and scrambled eggs formed a category of their own, when prepared with meat they might, in theory at least, be also classified as mutajjanat. To make such an omelette, one needed lean, boiled or roast meat. This was torn into small pieces, mixed with eggs beaten with salt and spices, and then fried in sesame oil in the tajin-type of vessel. Stewing and frying were surely the most popular of the cooking techniques applied in making meat dishes. Also, they were relatively typical, particularly if compared to the rules governing the art of cooking meat porridges. The term “meat porridge,” which is the most convenient translation of the term harisa, brings to mind a relatively simple dish. But harisa, like other dishes belonging to the category of oven dishes, or the so-called tannuriyyat, was not simple to cook. The dish was already discussed in the preceding section so there is no need to repeat the details of its time-demanding and burdensome preparation.  It may, however, be worth reminding that the most important aspect of cooking harisa involved shredding boiled meat and boiling it again together with ground wheat. This, however, had to be done in a covered and sealed pot which, moreover, was to be left in the covered tannur oven for the night. In the morning the pot was taken out and its contents was beaten into a smooth paste. Interestingly, the sources are somewhat inconsistent regarding the kind of meat of which harisa was made.  Some of them recommended beef, others suggested using either beef or mutton, still others instructed the cook to use both. Besides, chicken was also appreciated, either as the main, or as a secondary meat ingredient. Generally, however, the sources agree that meat for harisa should have been fat. Whatever kind of meat was used for making the harisa porridge, it was not the meat, but the technology of production which made the dish so unusual. Beating, or hars, was particular only for harisa. The other peculiarity, which consisted in leaving the dish in the oven for the night, harisa shared with most of the dishes categorized as tannuriyyat. Such an operation was applied in the case of, for example, sausages (sukhtur), trotters (akari), lentils cooked with meat, sikbaj, or a dish called tannuriyya, which was made of pieces of fat boiled meat mixed with wheat, spices, salt, and water.  A special kind of oven dishes were jawadhib, or sweet puddings made of bread crumbs, bread, or semolina mixed with almonds, pistachios or poppy seeds, sometimes with milk or sesame oil. Non-meat dishes themselves, they were, however, often baked in the oven under roasting meat (or chicken) so that they could be soaked with the running fat and meat juices. The pudding itself could be served with or without the roasted meat. Summing up, the Cairene meat preparations were of a quite diverse nature. Mutton, beef, goat, camel, lamb or kid, and, for special customers, horse meat, could be jointed, cut up medium or small, pounded with a cleaver and in the mortar, cooked in water or vinegar, stewed, roasted, fried, simmered, or cooked in the oven. Meat could be also made into sausages (which were rumored to have been prohibited once by the Fatimid caliph al-Hakim), or stuffed into pies such as sanbusik or bazmaward. Meat was always cooked with spices and herbs, sometimes with rice, vegetables and fruits of choice, often with legumes and nuts, sometimes with yoghurt. Sometimes it was made sour or sour-sweet, at other times spicy sweet, always with salt which, counteracted with sweetening agents, must have often produced sweet-and-salty flavor. Usually, but not always, meat dishes were served warm.
As for how it all tasted or smelled, the opinions were divided. Ibn al-Hajj, for example, observed that “meats in countries other than Egypt have no stench in them—in places like the Haz, Iraq, the Maghreb, or in other countries, they have a perfume-like smell. As for Egypt, one has to clean his hands from the stench of [local] meats.” Other authors, however, did not share Ibn al-Hajj’s negative impression: Ibn Zahira, a Syrian who stayed in Cairo in the ninth/fifteenth century, noticed that meats in Egypt, i.e. “camel, beef and sheep” were better than meats of Syria and the Haz.” Pero Tafur (the fifteenth century), too, observed that in Cairo “meats are all good,”while Sigoli (the fourteenth century) declared that the Alexandrian mutton was “the finest meat in the world to eat.” At the end of the sixteenth century de Villamont noted, while in Cairo, that “all their meats are prepared in a different way than ours” and that “ours”  “do not equal the local ones in delicacy.”

By Paulina B. Lewicka in the book 'Food and Foodways of Medieval Cairenes-Aspects of Life in an Islamic Metropolis of the Eastern Mediterranean', Brill, Leiden (the Netherlands) & Boston (U.S.A), 2011, p. 173-198. Edited and illustrated to be posted by Leopoldo Costa