Medieval Arab Cookery

Front Cover
Prospect Books, 2001 - Cooking - 527 pages

With a foreword by Claudia Roden. Readers of Claudia Roden's
masterworks have long been aware of the continuities in Middle Eastern
cookery, others have been tantalized by the influence of Islamic cooking on
the medieval West, all will rejoice in this new gathering of papers and
documents relating to medieval Arab food and cookery. The French scholar,
Maxime Rodinson's contributions are legendary, yet have only been seen in
translation in Petits Propos Culinaires. We include those already published there, together with the
text of his longest paper, 'Recherches sur les documents Arabes relatifs a la cuisine', translated by
Barbara Yeomans. The American scholar Charles Perry has been entertaining
participants at the Oxford Symposium with regular gleanings from his
researches into medieval Arab cookery, and several of his papers are gathered
here, together with a new study of fish recipes, and other items previously
published in PPC. Subjects include grain foods of the early Turks, rotted
condiments, cooking pots, and Kitab
al-Tibakhah, a 15th-century cookery book. English
study of the subject was first encouraged by Professor Arberry's translation
of the 13th-century cookery book Kitab al-Tabikh, published in 1939 in the
periodical Islamic Culture. Readers will be pleased to have this more accessible copy,
together with an introductory note and revision by Charles Perry.

From inside the book

Contents

Foreword
11
Studies in Arabic Manuscripts Relating to Cookery
91
Romanía and other Arabic Words in Italian
165
Copyright

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About the author (2001)

Charles Perry is well known as a translator of Arab cookery texts. He has travelled to Egypt and Syria to research the manuscripts from centuries past. Charles Perry was born in California and became a linguist, studying languages with his collection of dictionaries and grammars from over 200 languages. He studied Near Eastern Languages at Princeton University, and then worked as a journalist, becoming a food columnist and restaurant reviewer. He became interested in historical recipes, attending food symposiums including the Oxford Symposium on Food, and also started translating ancient texts from the Persian.

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