The Language of Food: A Linguist Reads the Menu (33 page)

It was the Persians whose love of desserts was the impetus that eventually changed these simple wafers and nuts into our modern desserts. Baghdad was established in a formerly Persian part of Mesopotamia, and
a culinary new wave developed
, as the great chefs of the Caliphs borrowed and enriched Persian desserts like the sweet almond pastry lauz
naj and starch candy
f
l
dhaj
,
sour dishes like sikb
j,
and the many sweet stews.

From the earliest menus we have, these sweet dishes tended to
congregate roughly toward the end of the meal, a property likely derived from their origin in Baghdad. The ordering probably comes from medieval models of health and digestion;
sweets were believed to help digest
heavy food. Baghdad cookbooks from the very first one, the al-Warr
q’s
Kitab al-Tabikh
, written in Baghdad c. 950–1000, place all the sweet puddings and fritters, lauz
naj, and crepes at the end of the meal. This is most mouthwatering to see in the fabulous meals of medieval Arabic literature like
One Thousand and One Nights
, which end in dessert after dessert, like the meal from the “Tale of Judar and His Brothers” of

roasted chicken, roast meat, rice with honey
, pilaf, sausages, stuffed lamb breast, nutty
kun
fa
swimming in bee’s honey,
zul
biyya
“donuts,”
qat
’if
pancakes folded around a sweet nut filling, and baklava.

In “The Tale of the Sixth Brother,” after serving meat porridge, goose stew in vinegar, and marinated chicken fattened on pistachio nuts, the host presses his guest to take dessert. “Take this dish away and bring the sweets,” he says, offering almond conserve and
fritters flavored with musk and “dripping with syrup”
and almond jelly.

In medieval Muslim al-Andalus
the man who was credited for bringing these things
west
from Baghdad was Ziryab, a musician who arrived in 822 at the court of Abd-al-rahman II of Cordoba. Ziryab was the inventor of the Andalusian musical form. Legend says that he memorized tens of thousands of songs and that he stayed up all night discussing composition with the Jinns. Ziryab was said to have first proposed that meals be served in courses, starting with a lamb soup he invented called
tafaya
made with almonds and cilantro. The eleventh-century Córdoba historian Ibn Hayyan tells us that
people even credited Ziryab with “inventing” many of the fabled desserts
of al-Andalus like lauz
naj and qatayif that came from Baghdad.
Ziryab seems to have personified in these legends
both the glories of Al-Andalus and the rich foods of the eastern court at Baghdad.

A few hundred years later, a thirteenth-century Andalusian cookbook specifies that
meals be served in seven courses
, beginning with this tafaya (because it was particularly “healthy”) and ending with three courses of desserts and egg dishes. And the first Spanish cookbook published after the Reconquista,
Roberto de Nola’s 1525
Libro de Cozina
, says that meals at court still begin with soup and end with sweets and fruit.

These fabulous foods spread to Europe, mainly through Muslim Andalusia and Sicily. The
Manuscrito Anonimo
, a medieval cookbook from Muslim Andalusia, gives recipes for dishes like
zirbaja
, an originally sweet-and-sour chicken stew,
jullabiyya
, chicken made with rose-syrup (
sharâb al-jullâb
, from the Persian word for rose), or lamb stewed with quince, vinegar, saffron, and coriander. These dishes were copied across Europe, first in Sicily, Naples, and England (all run by the Normans) and what we think of as “medieval” food developed: meat dishes seasoned with dried fruits, ginger, rosewater, and other Middle Eastern spices. The very first cookbook in English, the
Forme of Cury
, has recipes for rabbits in sugar, ginger, and raisins, or with honey and saffron; ground pork or chicken with dates in wine and sugar; and dishes like
mawmanee
and
blankmaunger
(savory puddings of sweetened boiled rice and almond milk with capon or fish that come from the medieval Arab dish
ma’muniyya
).