Get kidney fat from a sheep or a fat goat and clean it of its
membranes and veins. Pound it in a stone or wood mortar until it
takes the consistency of brains. Then take a new pot; knead the fat
with your hand and smear it over the whole inside of the pot, from
the bottom up the sides so that it has the thickness of a finger.
Then take thin bread made on the mirror in whole pieces without falling apart. Its preparation consists in kneading wheat dough well according to the recipe of mushahhada [literally, made like honeycomb], so that its ghurâb [literally raven or occiput -- not a common culinary term, because the MS has a "sic" in the margin; anyway, the meaning is clearly to keep the dough from becoming too stiff] doesn't form into a ball. Dilute it with water little by little until it becomes as thin as hasu. Heat the Indian mirror on a moderate charcoal fire, and when it has heated, take for the dough bowl a "moistener" (muballila) and pour [batter] on it [the mirror] with a cup until it swims. Return the dough [the excess that doesn't stick to the mirror] to the bowl, and it has attached to the mirror as a fine tissue. That is a ruqâq, and it is [also] kunafa. Shake out onto a kerchief, and it will come out round, in the shape of the mirror. Then pour the dough, as was done the first time, until you collect the necessary amount.
Then take fat, tender chickens, clean them, cut their breasts and put them into the pot, whole, as they are; add salt, oil, pepper, cinnamon and spikenard. Put it on the fire and cook it until done. When the juice has dried up, take [p. 62, verso] two ruqâqs (thin breads) and put them in the bottom of the earthenware pot which has been prepared and smeared with grease. Stick them to the sides and dust the thin bread with crushed sugar, peeled almonds, spikenard, Chinese cinnamon and cloves, a handful [in all].. Dribble on a good amount of fresh oil and sprinkle it all with rose water in which some musk and camphor have been dissolved, enough to dampen the sugar. Then lay over this two thin breads and dust them, as was done earlier, with sugar, almonds, spices and oil. Sprinkle with rose water. Then lay on another thin bread and do the same with it until you reach the middle of the pot.
Then take those cooked and prepared chickens, which have been rubbed with saffron dissolved in rose water, and lay them in the center of the pot over the bread. Then cover with a thin bread also, and dust with sugar, almonds and flavorings as was done before. Don't stop doing this until the pot is full and the chicken remains buried in the middle. When you have finished, dust it with a lot of sugar, throw on oil and rose water and cover with the bread fastened to the sides. Cover the pot with a fitted lid, sealed with dough. Then put it in the oven at moderate heat and leave it there as long as you would leave a pot with meat [viz. a stew].
Then take it out and break the seal. It gives off a perfumed odor. Remove the thin bread that covered it, if the fire has gotten it, and also that which has been stuck to the sides of the pot. Then invert it, such as it is, on a big platter and serve it. It is extremely good tasting with a penetrating aroma. It is an extraordinary dish, superior in its preparation to the royal victuals, praised for its nutrition and beautiful composition.
Take equal parts of almonds and sugar. Chop them and add spikenard, cinnamon, cloves, galingale, and some saffron, all ground. Then take a new pot and smear the bottom and sides with fresh, melted grease, as done earlier on. Then lay in the bottom of the pot some layered kunafa and make them stand up the sides of the pot. Then dust it with a spoon of this sugar, almonds and spices. Sprinkle it with some rose water in which some camphor has been dissolved. Then put thin bread on top of it and sprinkle it with another spoon, then a thin bread and a spoonful, until a quarter or less of the pot remains. Break over it each time [p. 63, recto] enough eggs. Then cover with the oil until it rises above it. Then cover it with bread and arrange the pot with dough. Put it in the oven at moderate heat, leaving it until it is finished. Pour it onto a big platter and use it. When it is on the platter, moisten with some rose and julep syrup. In any case, it will be good and delicious.
Take walnut kernels and hulled almonds, hazelnuts, kernels of pine nuts and pistachios, a quarter of a ratl of each. Grind them in a wooden or stone mortar until it is like fine flour. Add two-thirds of a ratl of bread crumbs made from semolina and two ratls of ground meat from the shoulder of a sheep, cleaned of its tendons. Break in fifteen eggs and beat it all together. Add ginger, galingale, pepper, cloves and Chinese cinnamon, one part of each; a dirham of mastic and of saffron, of each one half a dirham and of oil a good half ûqiya. Put it all in a new pot and throw in a ratl and a half of fresh milk. Lower it into the tannur (clay oven). Seal it and leave it until it is done, binds together, and is ready. Take it out, scatter ground sugar on it and serve it.
Take some of this thin bread, as was mentioned before how to do it. Cut it and trim it to the size of big rose leaves. Then take a pot and a tinjir [boiling kettle], in which [viz. the kettle] you put fresh oil, enough to cover the cut bread. Let it boil until it absorbs the oil and disappears. Then throw in clean honey, free of its froth, to cover it, and sprinkle it with rose water in which some camphor has been dissolved. Stir it gently so it doesn't stick to the bottom of the tinjir. Then dust it with ground sugar, stir it and when it has become thick, take it off the fire, stir it and dust it with spikenard, cloves, ground sugar, chopped peeled almonds and whole fanid [taffy]. Smooth it with a spoon while it boils and the oil disappears, as you do with mu'assal. The people of Bijaya [Bougie] and Ifriqiyya [Tunisia] make this kunafa with fresh and clarified butter instead of oil, but oil is better and lasts better.
Take pure semolina or wheat flour and knead a stiff dough without yeast. Moisten it little by little and don't stop kneading it [p. 63, verso] until it relaxes and is ready and is softened so that you can stretch a piece without severing it. Then put it in a new frying pan on a moderate fire. When the pan has heated, take a piece of the dough and roll it out thin on marble or a board. Smear it with melted clarified butter or fresh butter liquified over water. Then roll it up like a cloth until it becomes like a reed. Then twist it and beat it with your palm until it becomes like a round thin bread, and if you want, fold it over also. Then roll it out and beat it with your palm a second time until it becomes round and thin. Then put it in a heated frying pan after you have greased the frying pan with clarified butter, and whenever the clarified butter dries out, moisten [with butter] little by little, and turn it around until it binds, and then take it away and make more until you finish the amount you need. Then pound them between your palms and toss on butter and boiling honey. When it has cooled, dust it with ground sugar and serve it.
Make a dough of sifted semolina with a moderate amount of leaven. Moisten it with melted grease freshened with oil. Stir well until the dough absorbs it and moisten it with it again and again until it has absorbed all it can of the grease. Leave it for a while. Then form it into thin flatbreads, or if you want, into muwarraqa. Fry them in the frying pan with melted grease to cover them, until they are done. Then take them out and eat them with honey.
Take rice and soak it in fresh water, enough to cover it, for a day or overnight. Then wash it and put it on the fire in a pot or kettle (tinjir). Cook it with water or fresh milk, then add four or five ratls of clean honey from which you have skimmed the foam. Cook it carefully on a gentle fire. Moisten it, while cooking, with fresh milk until it sticks together, coagulates and becomes a paste. Pour it onto a platter and macerate it with a spoon. Make a hole in the center which you fill with fresh, melted butter and dust it with ground sugar and cinnamon and use it.
Know that mujabbana isn't prepared with only one cheese, but of two; that is, of cow's and sheep's milk cheese. Because if you make it with only sheep cheese, it falls apart and the cheese leaves it and it runs. And if you make it with cow's cheese, it binds, and lets the water run and becomes one sole mass and the parts don't separate. The principle in making it is that the two cheeses bind together. Use one-fourth part cow's milk and three-quarters of sheep's. Knead all until [p. 64, recto] some binds with its parts another [Huici Miranda observes that this passage is faintly written and only a few letters can be made out] and becomes equal and holds together and doesn't run in the frying pan, but without hardening or congealing. If you need to soften it, soften it with fresh milk, recently milked from the cow. And let the cheese not be very fresh, but strong without...[words missing]...that the moisture has gone out of. Thus do the people of our land make it in the west of al-Andalus, as in Cordoba and Seville and Jerez, and elsewhere in the the land of the West [here written as al-Maghrib].
Knead wheat or semolina flour with some yeast into a well-made dough and moisten it with water little by little until it loosens. If you moisten it with fresh milk instead of water it is better, and easy, inasmuch as you make it with your palm. Roll it out and let it not have the consistency of mushahhada, but firmer than that, and lighter than musammana dough. When the leaven begins to enter it, put the frying pan on the fire with a lot of oil, so that it is drenched with what you fry it with. Then wet your hand in water and cut off a piece of the dough. Bury inside it the same amount of rubbed cheese. Squeeze it with your hand, and whatever leaves and drains from the hand, gather it up [? the meaning of this verb eludes me] carefully. Put it in the frying pan while the oil boils. When it has browned, remove it with an iron hook prepared for it and put it in a dipper ["iron hand"] similar to a sieve held above the frying pan, until its oil drips out. Then put it on a big platter and dust it with a lot of sugar and ground cinnamon. There are those who eat it with honey or rose syrup and it is the best you can eat.
Break eggs over the aforementioned dough and knead with them instead of water, until the dough becomes slack and is done, as has been said. Then knead the previously mentioned cheese and also break over it as many eggs as it will bear. Beat them with some anise and fennel. Flatten it on the platter and then wet your hand in water and take some of it to stuff dough and make a mujabbana as was indicated in an earlier recipe and fry it like the preceding recipe. It turns out remarkable and delicious. This is what Ibn Sa'id b. Jami used to make and his companions and everyone found good. It is an invention of Musa b. al-Hajj Ya'ish, the muhtasib (market inspector) of Marrakesh.
Take some wheat or semolina dough, some fresh cheese and butter, one part of each. Rub the cheese and knead everything with fresh milk instead of water, until it is mixed, no remnants of cheese remain, and it takes the consistency of isfunj dough. Then make with it a mujabbana and fry it with fresh oil, as in the preceding recipe, and use it as you wish.
Take semolina dough, pounded peeled almonds, butter, soft cheese and eggs, the amount of each needed to knead it all together. Moisten it with fresh milk until it binds together and make with it a mujabbana.
Make dough as for musammana and make a small leafy round loaf of it. Then roll it out and put sufficient pounded cheese in the middle. Fold over the ends of the loaf and join them over the cheese on all sides; leave a small hole the size of a dinar on top, so the cheese can be seen, and sprinkle it with some anise. Then place it in the oven on a slab, and leave it until it is done, take it out and use it, as you wish.
Make a semolina dough as for musammana and take a piece of it, and roll it out on a board or a marble slab, layering it with melted fat, and let there be leavening in the dough. Fold over the ends, as in the previous recipe dealing with musammana, and make it on the bottom of a tajine. Put on top of it a leafy (muwarraq) flatbread, and over this throw a bit of fat so the bread bakes with it and does not dry out. Place it in the oven and leave it until its upper part is browned; then take it out, pierce it, pour skimmed honey on it and present it.
Take moist, fresh cheese and knead it in the hands; then take a deep, wide-bellied clay tajine [tâjin min hantam] and in the bottom of it put a thin flatbread, made like kunafa. Put the cheese over this, and then a[nother] flatbread (raghîf), and do this until there remains a third to a quarter of the pan. Pour fresh oil over it, place it in the oven, and leave it a little; then take it out, moisten it with a little fresh milk, and return it to the oven, and take it out and moisten with fresh milk and return to the oven thus until the milk and the oil disappear. Leave it until its surface is browned to the color of musk; then take it out and pour skimmed honey cleaned of its foam, or rose syrup, over it. There are those who sprinkle it with ground sugar and spices, and others who leave it be.
The mushahhada is the best of [p. 65, recto] the rafis dishes, all of them, the lightest, the most quickly digested, and the healthiest, because yeast is in it and it is kneaded firmly. Take good semolina and knead it with yeast. Moisten it with water little by little until it becomes slack and like thick hasu, in such a manner that you throw it in the frying-pan and it spreads out over the pan. Cover it and leave it a while. Then go back and do the same thing again until you are done kneading, it rises and you see that bubbles rise. Then set up a ceramic [hantam] frying pan over a hot fire, or an iron frying pan over a moderate fire, and when it has heated, rub it with a cloth soaked in fresh clarified butter or oil. Take up some of the batter in a cup and pour it in the middle, to the desired size, either great or small, and turn over on it a stoneware plate until it is done and pierced, and keep on greasing the pan and pouring dough [rather, batter] until it is used up. Then melt fresh butter and clean honey, and pour them over the mushahhadas in a serving dish, leave it a while until they are proper, sprinkle it with ground sugar, and serve. There are those who add eggs as necessary to the batter.
Knead a well-made dough from semolina like the "sponge" dough with yeast, and break in it as many eggs as you can, and knead the dough with them until it is slack. Then set up a frying pan of clay [hantam] on a hot fire, and when it has heated, grease it with clarified butter or oil. Put in a thin flat loaf of the dough and when the bread is done, turn over. Take some of the dough in the hand and smear the surface of the bread with it. Then turn the smeared surface to the pan, changing the lower part with the upper, and smear this side with dough too. Then turn it over in the pan and smear it, and keep smearing it with dough and turning it over in the tajine, and pile it up and raise it until it becomes a great, tall loaf. Then turn it by the edges a few times in the tajine until it is done on the sides, and when it is done, as it is desired, put it in a serving dish and make large holes with a stick, and pour into them melted butter and plenty of honey, so that it covers the bread, and present it.
Take the dough described under murakkaba kutamiyya
and make of it a thin flatbread in a heated tajine, and when it is
done, turn it over, and top it with dates that have been cleaned,
pounded, [p. 65, verso] kneaded in the hands and moistened
with oil. Smooth them with the palm, then put on another flatbread
and turn it over, and then another bread, and repeat this until it is
as high as desired. When it is done on all sides, put it in a dish
and pour over it hot oil and honey cleaned of its scum; this is how
the people of Ifriqiyya make it.
It is desirable that the conditions of the various kinds of rafîs be known. Its dough should be of pure semolina with moderate yeast, and the salt should be very little, so that no flavor of salt is tasted, and the butter should be boiled and strained, and the honey skimmed, and if it is made with oil, this should be hot, so none of the flavor of the raw oil should remain. It is baked in a tannur so the bread will be detached, porous and spongy inside. If you pound it until the rafîs is soft and moist, and if you make the rafîs with fat, it will be tastier and sweeter and easier to digest. and if it is not leavened the bread will be dough and the rafîs firm and compact, like the rafî s of the Berbers and that of the marketplace, and it will not do except for weary laborers or for feeding chickens.
Take sweet, peeled almonds, and pound them until they are like a dough, and add as much wheat flour, and knead it hard with eggs in place of water, and sprinkle with a little rosewater in which a little camphor has been dissolved. Then make thin flatbreads and cook them in a clay pan over a gentle fire until it binds and does not overcook. Then pound with sweet almond oil or fresh, melted, cleaned butter, make a round loaf and put it in a large dish, as if it were a sugar loaf, and when you take it out, pour the almond oil or fresh, melted, cleaned butter, or rose syrup, over it.
Take flour of wheat or semolina, liquefy it and knead it with fresh milk, eggs, and yeast. Knead it very well until the dough becomes flexible, and make flatbreads with it, and cook them on a metal sheet [tabiq] and do not leave it for long, but rather take it out still moist. Add peeled, minced almonds and ground sugar. Beat according to the sugar loaf recipe, and sprinkle it with ground sugar, and pour fresh, melted butter over it and serve it; [p. 66, recto] it is moist and sweet.
Take sieved crumbs of leavened bread fresh from the oven and pound only the crumbs without the crust. Knead it by hand with the same amount of moist, soft, unsalted cheese and with a bit of butter. Make a small round bread (qursa) of this, put it in a dish, and throw thereon melted, clarified butter and sufficient honey, cleaned of its foam.
Take flatbreads kneaded with eggs. Crumble very finely the necessary amount. Rub fresh cheese after adding salt, a little more than the loaves, and put aside. Then take a kettle (tinjir), put in sufficient honey, and clean it of its scum. Add fresh oil and then add the aforementioned crumbs and cheese. Keep stirring it gently with a spoon, little by little, until the oil disappears. Turn it onto a platter, smooth it, and dust it with sugar and ground cinnamon.
Take good semolina, knead it, and make thin flatbreads of it, and cook them, but not too long so they lose their tenderness. Then crumble them very finely and put them over a moderate fire, and pour in fresh, odorless oil, and cover it with the oil. Then take good Shaddâkh dates, as much as the crumbs, and there are those who use more Shaddâkh dates than crumbs. After cleaning them of their stones and pellicles, pound them in a mortar until they are like rose jam, and put it in the tinjir [kettle] with boiling oil. Stir it with a spoon, and when it dissolves in the oil, throw in the breadcrumbs little by little, and stir until it is blended and there is no distinction between the crumbs and the dates and they are a single mass, like a paste, then remove it from the fire, and the oil will disappear; leave it a while, then sprinkle it with sufficient cinnamon, spikenard, cloves, ginger, and galingale. Stir it with a spoon until the spices are mixed in, and pour it into a dish. Even out the bread, smooth it out, make a hole in the middle, and fill it with the butter in which it was cooked. Sprinkle it with sugar, spikenard, and cloves. Insert split almonds and fâ nîd, and serve it. According to this recipe it lasts for the space of many days [p. 66, verso] and does not spoil or change.
Take semolina and mix it with fresh oil, knead it like the dough for ka'k, sprinkle oil over it, and make good qursas, like sugar molds or smaller. Place in the oven, and do not overcook; then take them out, rub in a dish, and grate in the palms until it is like semolina again, and pass it through a sieve and put it aside. Then take Shaddâkh dates cleaned of their stones and pellicles, and pound them into a paste and mix in the same amount of white, sifted flour, and add a sufficient amount of the mentioned spices, knead until it is blended and forms a single body. Then smear your hand with oil and make a qursa in the middle of the dish, and pour fresh oil over it.
Knead the finest white flour, or semolina, and make flatbreads, cook them in a tannur or in the (bread) oven over a moderate fire, and crumble them small. Take skimmed honey and dilute it with the same amount of fresh water, and throw in as much saffron as will color the crumbs to the desired tint. Then throw in these crumbs and stir it until it takes body like a paste, and continue stirring. When it hardens, turn it out in a bowl after sprinkling it with plenty of split almonds, and stir it until it is mixed. Make a hole in the middle and fill it with aromatic clarified butter or fresh butter, sprinkle with sugar, cinnamon, spikenard, cloves and fanid, and present it.
Take a mudd, by Abu Hafs's measure, of fine white wheat flour or of good semolina, and mix it with half a ratl of oil. It is good for traveling, and does not crumble, and he who wishes may eat it immediately. Put a ratl of oil or more for the mentioned mudd, and in that manner the baked taste is like that of walnut marzipan (jauzinaq) and so forth.
Moisten fine white flour or semolina, according to the aforementioned rule, with oil or clarified butter, and it is more delicious and keeps better with oil, because clarified butter, when kept long, smells and becomes bitter. Pour in hot water little by little, and knead it until it is dry, and continue kneading it until it is supple and ripe, so that when a piece of it is taken and stretched [or possibly rolled] out, the stretching does not break it; and he who wishes may put in a bit of yeast, or leave it out. Then take of peeled almonds [p. 67, recto] and sugar equal parts, and the sugar could be more than the almonds; pound this until it is like a dough, and put it in a bowl. Add spikenard and cloves in the necessary amounts, and a little mastic, and some camphor dissolved in rosewater. Knead the filling with this until it is mixed; then grease a stone work surface with oil, and make a ka'k on it with the dough, and bury the filling inside it, in equal amounts. Then clear a place in the oven, far from the fire, and place the ka'k in it on a clean slab, and leave it until it is done and ready. Take it out and make various shapes from the ka'k dough, like what is called khushkalân in Bougie. The khushkalâ n is another kind of dish, which will be mentioned after this. Make filled qursas (round flat loaves), small and large, and forms of birds, gazelles and the like.
Take coarse semolina and rub it with plenty of clarified butter and fresh oil. Soak it in a little water, and do not handle it too much, lest the dough be dry. Then make flatbreads filled with the filling described for ka'k, and diverse shapes. Cut them with shears or a knife, and shape them into rings and semicircles, ka'k and small and large flatbreads This is the true khushkalan. Then fry it in fresh oil, take it out, and sprinkle it with spikenard and ground sugar.
Take good wheat, put it in a washtub, and cover it with good,
fresh water. Change the water after two or three days so that the
wheat softens and makes talbina [releases its starch into
the water], as is done for starch. Then remove the water and
press with the feet in the bottom of a rush basket, or by hand if
there is only a little of it. Sieve into a bowl what comes out of the
pith. Then pour a little fresh water over the wheat bran to wash it.
Squeeze it until none of the pith remains. Put all this in a bowl and
leave it in the sun until it binds together. Strain from it the flour
water that is left over, time and again, until it thickens. Then pour
it in a cloth and hang it so that it drips until it dries, and expose
it to the sun if you want to make starch. This is the recipe for
starch. Do not let it get near dew or it will spoil. When the
khubaiz has been made, take some of it before it dries -- it
will be like yogurt -- and beat it with your hand until it is smooth.
If you wish, dissolve dry starch in fresh water so that it comes out
according to this description, and make from it.
Then put a frying-pan over a moderate fire, and when it has heated, smear it with a cloth soaked in oil. Then take some of the dissolved starch with a spoon and pour it in the frying-pan. [p. 67, verso] With your hand, move it around in the pan so that it stretches out thin. When it has bound together and whitened, take it to a board or a cloth and grease the frying pan with oil. Pour in another large spoonful until you have a sufficient quantity. Leave it on the cloth in the sun until it dries. Then put it in a rush basket or a sack, and beat it all over so that it whitens until it forms crumbs the size of grains of wheat, or a little larger.
Then put a frying pan full of fresh oil over a moderate fire. When the oil is boiling, put in fresh cheese while the oil boils. Remove it right away in a sieve so it does not burn and drain off the oil. Have prepared filtered skimmed honey, thickened in a pot on a weak fire. Leave it on the hearthstone so that it remains fluid. Every time you take this khubaiz from the frying-pan, drain it of its oil and throw it into this melted honey, and overturn the cheese into it with a spoon, adding to it little by little, and stir it with a spoon until they are mixed one with the other, it hardens and forms one mass, and remove it.
Soak semolina or fine flour with fat or oil, knead it exceedingly well with some leavening and add water little by little. The dough should be dry. Knead exceedingly until it is slack, and stretch [roll out] a piece of it over a salâya (stone work surface) greased with oil, and with your thumb spread on it fresh fat from a sheep or a goat, cleaned of its membranes and dissolved in some oil until it becomes like brains or butter. Roll it thin until it covers the surface of the rolled-out piece. Then envelope with another, roll it out, smear it with fat like the first one, and roll it out. Then cut it into triangles or circles and squares, then put the frying-pan over a moderate fire with enough oil to fry in, and fry until done. Drain the oil and float them in rose syrup or clean honey.
Take clean semolina, or fine flour, which is better, and mix it with plenty of fat, in the amount of one ratl to each small mudd. Knead it like ka'k dough and roll out small round loaves (qursas) in oil. Don't overdo the frying. Place it in hot, clean honey, in which shelled walnuts and sugar, both pounded coarsely, have been put, and leave it there until the honey enters with the sugar and the nuts in their foliation. Remove from the honey. The walnuts and coarse sugar will remain. It is a type of mishâsh [p. 68, recto] and there should be no spices in it.
Make a filling of almonds and coarse sugar, without putting in any spices or roots but only rosewater and camphor so that it remains white. Then make little round flatbreads of the described dough and put on this filling another little round flatbread. Fold over the edges and pinch with a ka'k press so that it sticks, then fry it gently in oil, and place it in rose syrup.
Take some of this dough described for ka'k and of the mentioned filling, and shape it [viz. the filling] like hazelnuts, little walnuts, little ka'ks, the description of a necklace [or chaplet] of pomegranates, and farthalat. This is what is called "the Qadi's ears." It is made to resemble roses and other flowers, rings, and so on. All being thus filled, bury some of that filling inside each piece [of dough] and prick it finely. Then fry it in a clean frying-pan with fresh oil, and take it out immediately. Place it in a strainer like a palm, drain the oil and float the fat in skimmed honey, or in julep syrup or mastic syrup, and take it out.
Take a ratl and a half of white sugar, dissolve it in a little water, put it over a gentle fire, skim off the scum and ?filter ["milk"] it. Then throw in peeled, pounded almonds in the amount of two ratls, and stir all this until it forms a single body and its fat is softened. Then take it out and leave it a while and add spikenard, cloves pounded in rosewater, and a little camphor, knead all this until it dries, and give it the shape of large or small ka'ks, and leave it until it dries a little. Then place in starch that has been dissolved in a dish and a bit coagulated, and leave it until it dries. Then put it in the frying-pan with fresh oil and fry it so it soaks in it, leave it a little and take it out so it will not dry out or spoil. Then place it in a syrup of roses, or julep, or clarified honey.
Take the filling described for making ka'ks, and stiffen it with fine flour or starch ["wheat dust or starch dust"]. Knead it with spices and a little camphor dissolved in rosewater, and make as many ka'ks as desired from it. Line them up on a slab and place it into the oven, and leave them a little until they bind, and take them out. This is the tastiest there is among these sorts of dishes.
[p. 68, verso] Take one part of finely pounded almonds and one of white sugar. Pound all this in a stone or wooden mortar until they are mixed, and add cloves, ground spikenard dissolved in rosewater, and some camphor, according to the usual quantities for ka'k and as may be desired. Then immerse in starch dissolved so that it is runny, and put it on a board or large tray and leave it in the sun until the starch dries up.
Pound almonds very well and add them to the same amount of sugar, and add spikenard, cloves, some camphor, and musk dissolved in rosewater. Pound all this in a wooden mortar until it is mixed and smooth. Then roll out ka'ks and small flatbreads and pieces shaped like walnuts and hazelnuts. Leave it a while and then submerge it in sugared rose syrup and thickened julep, and take it out. Submerge it a second time, and a third, and leave it until it dries and separates. It is good, magnificent, and it used to be made in Marrakesh.
It used to be made in Marrakesh in the house of the Prince of the Believers, Abu Yusuf al-Mansur, God have mercy upon him. Take white sugar and dissolve it and "milk" it with rosewater. Then put in almonds pounded like dough, and stir it gently until it is combined and becomes like the filling of a qahiriyya. Then take it from the fire, and when it is lukewarm, put in spikenard, cloves, a little ginger, and a small amount of mastic, after first dissolving these ground spices in rosewater in which has already been dissolved some camphor, musk and cut almonds. Beat all this and knead it until one part blends with the other, and make qursas of the size of ka'ks and farthalât and make balls in the shape of oranges and resembling apples and pears, until the sanbûsak is used up. It is delicious, and it is called sanbûsak in the East, and it is the sanbûsak of kings.
It is made in three ways: one in which a thin flatbread is filled with crushed garlic and spices. It is folded into a triangle and fried in oil. Another is made with mixed dough beaten with pounded meat, spices and eggs. Another is made in the form of farthalât and fried and presented. Another is made with dough kneaded with clarified butter or melted fat. With it you make farthalât, and you don't fry it but leave it raw. And this is good to throw in isfîdhbâjat and stuffed things.
[p. 69, recto] It is made from the pierced musahhada that has already been mentioned. Take peeled almonds, pound them and let them dry until they are like semolina. Add as much again of sugar, spikenard, cloves, and Chinese cinnamon. Then take a flatbread (raghîf) of the aforementioned musahhada, free of burns, and sprinkle it with those almonds and ground sugar aplenty. Sprinkle it with rosewater in which some camphor is dissolved, and fold it until it is a half circle. Glue the edges with dough wetted in rosewater, and put it in a frying-pan full of fresh oil. Boil it, and then take it out immediately and remove it so it drains of the oil. Let if float in a syrup of roses or julep or skimmed honey. You might make raghîfs on raghîfs, filled inside, and glue the margins together, and they will turn out circles and halves.
Take a ratl of meat, without bones, from a fat sheep. Cut it and put it in a pot. Cook also a white tafâyâ, and when the meat is done, throw in four ratls of clarified honey and a ratl of peeled, pounded almonds. Color with saffron and pour on half a ratl of oil, and stir over a gentle fire until the cooking is done, and pour it into a dish and sprinkle it with minced sugar and ground Chinese cinnamon.
Take meat from a tender, fat sheep, from its shoulder and fatty extremities, without bones, and fat tail as it is, to the amount, as near as may be, of four ratls. Put it in a new pot with spices and water, six ûqiyas of oil and six of clean honey. Cook it until it is done and falling apart, and skim off the grease. Take the meat out of the pot, and to what remains of the broth add three ratls of skimmed honey, a third of a ratl of dissolved starch and minced almonds. Keep stirring until it is almost thickened, then return the meat which had been removed, and moisten it with the strained fat little by little until it absorbs the fat, like mu'assal; remove it and leave it until it cools.
Take good, strained honey and put it in a boiling kettle (tinjîr). Add four ûqiyas of starch for each ratl of honey, dissolved in rosewater, and if you wish, tint it with saffron. Keep stirring it until it is almost thickened (bound). Pour in enough fresh oil that it cooks and doesn't burn. Scatter on it almonds, [p. 69, verso] split. Moisten with the oil until soaking. When its binding is dry and it is finished cooking, remove it and empty into a dish and take what oil sweats on it. You might add some hulled sesame and camphor dissolved in rosewater, and it will turn out admirable.
Take a ratl of clean, white honey, and three û qiyas of starch, the white of two eggs, sufficient fresh oil and minced almonds. Cook over a gentle, weak fire and keep stirring, without being careless about stirring, until it whitens and boils and takes the consistency of mu'assal. Cut it with camphor dissolved in water and it will turn out admirable.
Take strained honey and pour in dissolved starch, tinted with saffron: for one ratl of honey half a ratl of starch, and if there is no starch on hand, use dissolved fine white flour according to this recipe. Pour in sufficient oil and keep stirring it until the oil disappears from it. Mix in pepper, cloves, and a little camphor, re-thicken it and serve it.
Knead fine flour and add water little by little until the dough is
slack. Let it be lighter than the dough for musahhada. Leave
it in a pot near the fire until it rises. You will know it is done
when you tap on the side of the pot with your finger. If you hear a
thick, dense sound, it has risen. Then put a frying-pan on the fire
with plenty of oil, and when the oil boils, take this runny batter
and put it in a vessel with a pierced bottom. Put your finger over
the hole; then raise your hand over the frying pan and quickly remove
your finger. The batter will run out through the holes into the
frying-pan, while you are turning your hand in circles, forming
rings, lattices and so on, according to the custom of making it. Be
careful that the oil is not too little or too cool, or the batter
will stick to the pan, but let it be abundant and boiling. When it is
done, take it out carefully and throw it in skimmed spiced honey, and
he who wishes it tinted and colored may add to some of the batter the
juice of brazilwood or gum-lac,
or juice of madder or saffron, or juice of tender green fennel, or
juice of fox grape. When the honey has absorbed this, remove it on
crossed woods to the mu'assal dish until it drains and nothing
remains on it except what it holds inside. And take up the
[recipe breaks off at page break; beginning of p. 70, recto, is middle of another recipe]
[p. 72, recto] ...[words missing; upper right corner of this page is cut off for 7 lines]... and put it in fresh milk. Add to it eggs in the amount of ..[words missing]... frying pan with much oil, and when the oil has boiled, empty out ...[words missing]... your hand and it will make the shape of a ring on which you can put a stamp ...[words missing]... immediately. Drown it in warm honey, free [of scum] ...[words missing]...
[line, probably title, missing because of rent in page]
... in a tajine. Remove its scum and wash it with water until it sticks together and ...[words missing]... half a ratl and of oil another half. Stir it until it is done and take it from the fire. Put it in a big clay dish. Then add a half ratl of white, ground sugar.
Take good, clean honey and put it on a moderate fire in a clean boiling kettle (tinjir). For each ratl of honey add two ûqiyas of starch, that dilutes and mixes with the honey, and stir it continually. If you want, color it with saffron. Blend it with a spoon on all sides. When it is almost bound together, add for each ratl of honey, four ûqiyas of oil and continue to stir it. Add half an ûqiya of good yellow [bees'] wax for each ratl and a half of honey. When the oil begins to dribble/leak through, clarify whatever dribbles according to the methods for clarifying oil. Its sweetness dries up and if not, it remains moist. Scatter over it peeled, chopped almonds in a sufficient amount. With the almonds, you might add some hulled sesame seeds, and leave it. When it is done cooking, pour it over a salâya [a stone chopping board or work surface] with fresh oil. Make with it large or small raghîfs. Use them as they are or make with them whatever kind of qursas [small round loaves] you may wish.
Dilute a ratl of sugar and put it on a gentle fire. Add
four ûqiyas of honey so it retains its moistness and
doesn't break apart [i.e., crystallize] while thickening.
Cook it until it thickens and throw in three ûqiyas of
good oil, one of liquified starch and three dirhams of gum
dissolved in rose water. Continue to stir it until it binds together.
Scatter chopped almonds over it and when it thickens, form on a
salâ ya (stone work surface) greased with sweet almond
oil and make from it [p. 72, verso] flatbreads. Then cut it
into squares with scissors.
...Sweet... [missing words on this page because of same rent as on obverse]
...they are called qabît (twigs). Take honey ... [words missing] ... a light [fire] and don't stop stirring by hand until it thickens, and take [from the fire]...[words missing]... and dry on a thick nail. Fold it over the nail and continue ...[words missing]...its scum. Then add beaten egg whites ...[words missing]... of the honey and stir it vigorously with a big spoon. When it is ready to bind together ...[words missing]... the necessary amount. Fold over the edges on all sides and stir it with all your strength ...[words missing]... Add their whites. Then pour it over a greased salâya (stone work surface) and make flat loaves [raghîfs] with it. Cut it into strips with a knife and when it has cooled, break it into twigs.
Take a ratl and a half of fresh milk and put it in a tinjir on a gentle fire. Add one quarter ratl of diluted starch paste and one ratl of fresh oil. Stir it and then add two ratls of pounded white sugar and stir it until it is done. Put it into a clean clay dish and serve it.
Take Shaddâkh dates. Clean them of their pits and pound a ratl of them in a mortar. Then dilute with water in a tinjir on a gentle fire. Add the same amount of skimmed honey. Stir it until it binds together and throw in a good amount of peeled almonds and walnuts. Put in some oil so it doesn't burn and to bind firmly. Pour it over a greased salâya (stone work surface). With it you make qursas (round cakes). Cut it with a knife in big or little pieces.
In Marrakesh this used to be called "children's wrists." Pound peeled almonds with white sugar, but don't be too extreme in pounding them -- they should be the coarseness of grits. Then pummel it with your palm and make it like a wrist, either round or shaped like a wrist. Then roll out a raghîf of fresh fânî d [pulled taffy] before it dries, and put the "wrist" in the middle of the raghîf. Twist it and lift it on all [p. 73, recto] sides until the sides stick together. Put it aside. Then put white flour in a tajine on a weak, gentle fire and when the flour has heated, put the "wrist" in it and turn it over and over until the flour sticks to it, the top rises and it is the same on all sides. Lay it aside and let the children play with it.
Take a ratl of ground sugar and two thirds of a ratl of white bread crumbs scraped until they become like semolina flour. Add eggs and beat them with the flour and sugar. Then put a frying pan on a gentle fire with a ratl of fresh oil. When it boils, toss in these crumbs and the sugar beaten with eggs. Stir it on a gentle fire until it binds and cools. Dust with sugar, spikenard and cinnamon.
This is given to feverish people as a food and takes the place of medicine. Take sweet, peeled almonds and pound them fine. Then extract their milk with a sieve or clean cloth, until it becomes like milk. Add pomegranate and tart apple juice, pear juice, juice of quince and of roasted gourd, whatever may be available of these. Prepare them like the "juice" squeezed from the almonds and like the mixture of white sugar. Put it in a glazed earthenware tinjir and light a gentle fire under it. After boiling, add some dissolved starch paste and when it thickens, put together rose oil and fresh oil and light under it a gentle fire until it thickens. Then take it off the fire and take it out. If the stomach is weak, add rosewater mixed with camphor.
Take good sugar and moisten it with fresh water. Put it on a moderate fire until it binds and put in chopped almonds. Measure it over marble and if you see that it is coming apart, grease the marble. And it (the candy) is shaped on it (the marble) into raghî fs that you cut with scissors in whatever shape you want. While it is still warm, give it the shape of dates stuffed with almonds or with a piece of fanid, or resembling Malaga figs or like grapes or or raisins and so forth. Leave it until it cools and lay it aside.
Take three ratls of white sugar and one of clean honey. Put them together in a tinjir on a gentle fire and continue stirring and when it begins to thicken, then add 1 1/2 ratls of dissolved starch paste, colored [with saffron], and white flour. Continue stirring and when it begins to thicken, pour on oil, [p. 73, verso] sweet, washed; and scatter on it chopped almond and pistachio. Thicken it carefully. When it is completed, set it aside and loosen it with rose water, camphor, spikenard and clove. Then pour it over a salâya (stone work surface) and make qursas with it. Put it in a greased pot and set it aside.
Take white sugar, dissolve it in a little water and put it on a gentle fire. Remove the froth and when it is almost bound together, throw in peeled almonds, pounded somewhat coarsely until they become like semolina, in the quantity of two thirds of the sugar. When it is finished binding together, remove it from the fire and cut it with some camphor, spikenard and clove dissolved in rose water. Pummel it and turn it onto a marble slab greased with oil when it is still warm. Lay on it a smooth greased plank until the surface is smooth. Then cut it with a knife in the shape of reeds or whatever shape you want, and set it aside.
Take good sugar and dissolve it in a little water. Put it on a gentle fire and leave it to boil until the water dries up. Then dribble it over marble and measure it. When it has stiffened, take it from the fire and add ginger, galingale, spikenard, clove and ground, dissolved mastic. Stir it and then throw over a greased marble small qursas (round flat loaves) and let them be until they cool and become solid. For him who wants it musky, dissolve some musk and camphor in good rose water and cut it [the candy] with this at the end, when it is removed from the fire and cooling. It improves [or perfumes] the breath, warms the stomach and helps digest food.
Take white sugar and dilute it with a moderate amount of water, neither too much nor too little. Put it on a gentle fire. Remove the scum and clean it. Continue cooking until it binds moderately. Then take it from the fire and when it has cooled a little, take it with your hand and pull it as you do with pulled honey sweet, until it whitens and you like the whiteness. If you see that it is drying out between your hands and isn't yet as white as you would like, put it near the fire until it softens and continue doing it (the pulling) and putting it near the fire until you are pleased with its whiteness. He who wants it musky, dissolve some musk and camphor in good rose water and sprinkle the sugar with it and lubricate your hands in this rose and musk water while you pull it little by little, until the musk and camphor penetrate it. It will turn out excellently... [p. 74, recto] Then make ka'ks and qursas (flat loaves) and shapes similar to maftû na and fists (ma'asim) and whatever shape you want. Set it on a slat in the air to cool and dry and set it aside.
Take a ratl and a half of sugar and throw in rosewater and water to cover. Stir it and pound it. Clarify it with a sieve in a ceramic [hantam] vessel and add an ûqiya of honey for each ratl. Take a ratl of peeled white almonds and cut them into thirds and quarters. Return it to the fire, cook it until it coagulates, and take it to a platter which has been greased with almond oil and roll it out on a marble sheet. Cut it as you will. Dust it with sugar and do the same with pistachio, pine nuts and walnuts. And test it to see whether it takes them. And throw it on the salâya (stone work surface)...[some five words missing]...thin and it is very good. Then make with it what you may want. If you want it with camphor and aromatic spices, grind whatever of them you want and sprinkle them over it, if God wishes.
Pound sweet almonds like brains and add fresh water. Pass this through a fine sieve until it becomes like milk. Then take a quantity of pomegranate juice, sour or sweet, like the water taken from...[words missing]...of the juice of sour and sweet pomegranate or juice of tart apples, or pear juice, or quince juice or juice of roasted gourd-whichever of this you may have-and take as much as all this of sugar and white honey. Put it all in an earthenware pot. Light under it a gentle fire and throw in, after boiling, some starch. When it begins to bind together, add drops of almond oil (fat). Light under it a weak fire until it coarsens, and it becomes like thickened khabîs. Take it from the fire and use it, if God wishes.
You take clear and clean semolina and knead it with lukewarm water and yeast and knead again. When it has risen, turn the dough, knead fine and moisten with water, little by little, so that it becomes like tar after the second kneading, until it becomes leavened or is nearly risen. Take a small new jug, wet it in water and then in clarified butter or fresh oil until it is soaked. Then take a fat reed. Cut off a length to reach to the bottom of the pot. Grease the reed with oil and put the lid on the pot and seal (the lid to the pot) with clay with the reed inside, and put it in the oven with bread, and let it be in the middle of the bread. When the bread is done, know that it (the "sponge") is also ready. Take it out, remove the clay and take out the reed. Take fresh or clarified butter and honey. Heat them [p. 74, verso] and pour them into the pot in the place where you removed the reed and leave it until the "sponge" soaks it up. When it has absorbed it, add butter or honey until it soaks up more. Then break the pot away from it, put it on a platter and cut it as you would cut watermelon. Chop almonds and walnuts and pine nuts and pistachios and lump white sugar and sprinkle it over it ...[about two words missing]... with cinnamon, Chinese cinnamon or the like, if God wishes.
Take very white flour and knead it with milk, salt and yeast. And when you have kneaded it considerably, leave it until it rises. Then take one egg or several, according to the quantity of the dough. Break them in a bowl and beat them. Moisten the dough with them little by little and knead it until it slackens. Take a new frying pan and shower it with clarified butter or fresh oil. Take a handful of the dough and spread it in the pan. Put over it a layer of almonds and pistachios, or whichever one you have. When the almonds cover the dough, put another dough on the almonds, and so on, layer on layer. In this way you fill the frying pan up to two fingers (from its rim). Put it in the oven with the bread and when it is done, prick it with a knife and take it out as it is. Heat honey and clarified butter and pour over, and when it has soaked them up, throw it on a platter and sprinkle over it Chinese cinnamon and cinnamon and serve it, if God wishes.
Take semolina and fine flour, in the same manner as ka'k, with clarified butter or with oil, and let its weight be about a ratl. Take ten eggs and beat them in a bowl and add them to the dough little by little. Knead it with them until it becomes like tar. Lay hold of an earthenware stewpan (cazuela, qaswila) the same size above as below. Let clarified butter and fresh oil run over it and empty the dough into it. Leave it until it rises and put it in the oven. When it is done, cause there to be in its highest part tubes like embattlements. Cut that to those tubes with a little of its body and let it/them be like a pot lid. Then make a large cut in the qursa with a knife. Heat honey with butter and scatter in it spikenard, cinnamon, chinese cinnamon, chopped almonds, walnuts and pine nuts and pistachios, or one of the two, however much you want of them. Let the qursa absorb that, put the lid back on and serve it, if God wishes.
Pound almond and walnut, pine nuts and pistachio very small. [p. 75, recto] Knead fine white flour with oil and make thin breads with it and fry them in oil. Pound [sugar] fine and mix with the almond, the walnut and the rest. Add to the paste pepper, cinnamon, Chinese cinnamon and spikenard. Knead with the necessary amount of skimmed honey and put in the dough whole pine nuts, cut pistachio and almond. Mix it all and then stuff the qananit that you have made of clean wheat flour.
Knead the dough well with oil and a little saffron and roll it
into thin flatbreads. Stretch them over the tubes (qananit) of
cane, and you cut them [the cane sections] how you want them,
little or big. And throw them [into a frying pan full of
oil], after decorating them in the reed. Take them out from the
reed and stuff them with the stuffing and put in their ends whole
pistachios and pine nuts, one at each end, and lay it aside. He who
wants his stuffing with sugar or chopped almond, it will be better,
if God wishes.
Take bread from white semolina, take it outside and put it in the
sun until it dries. Grind it and sieve it, soak it in oil and leave
it a day and a night. Throw on thickened honey, after scattering on
it, and knead it with pepper and enough spices to make it into round
hazelnuts [or meatballs], God willing.
Knead the amount that you want of fine flour and knead a long
time. Leave it until it rises and then pound almonds very fine until
they are like brains. Grind with an equal amount of white sugar and
knead the two parts with some rosewater and perfume it with fine
spices. Roll the dough out long and put on the stuffing and cover
with dough. Make it round and make ka'ks with it. Send it to
the oven and, if you want, fry it in the frying pan with oil and
scatter sugar on top. He who wants it simple, let him omit the
Take two parts sugar and another two of peeled almonds. Pound [the almonds] very well and smoothly and sieve the sugar over them. Add enough water to knead it and of fragrant spices whatever you may want, such as clove, musk or nutmeg. Make ka'ks with this paste. Dilute starch in water in a thin solution, without salt, and leave it in the leavening until it rises [or sours]. Then pour in honey and beat it smoothly. Then dip the ka'ks in it, one after the other. You will have prepared hot oil or almond oil in the frying pan. Turn them into it to fry lightly and take them out hot. You will put it in syrup of julep [p. 75, verso] or of honey. Then you roll them, after removing them, in minced sugar, if God wishes.
Throw on the sugar a like amount of water or rosewater and cook until its consistency is good. Empty it into the mould and make of it whatever shape is in the mold, the places of the "eyebrow" and the "eye" and what resembles the dish you want, because it comes out of the mould in the best way. Then decorate it with gilding and whatever you want of it. If you want to make a tree or a figure of a castle, cut it piece by piece. Then decorate it section by section and stick it together with mastic until you complete the figure you want, if God wills.
Add one part of sieved sugar to one part of cleaned and pound almonds. Knead it all with rose water and roll your hand in almond oil and make with it whatever you want of all fruits and shapes, if God wishes.
Take half a ratl of sugar and three ûqiyas of almond oil, two of fine flour and three of pounded pistachios. Cook it all together on the fire until it binds together and cut it with musk and clove, if God wishes.
Take bread made from semolina and put it in a pot of clay or
earthenware, and put it in the oven in which you leave it until it
rises. Then throw it in water or honey according to the sweetness you
desire and leave it until it moistens nicely. Then forcefully squeeze
it with your hand until you remove all its moistness. Put it to one
side. Sieve the water with a thickly woven kerchief of clean linen
and put it in a rapacious [sic] vessel...[words
missing]... and put in it rue cut in pieces, if God wishes, may
He be praised.
Here ends what has been found in this compilation, line by line. God bless our lord Muhammad, his Family and his Companions and grant them great peace. It was finished halfway through the morning of Saturday, 13th of Ramadan of the year 1012 [14 February 1604].