The Sultan’s Feast: A 15th-Century Egyptian Cookbook

Daniel L. Newman
Paperback, 352 pages
9780863561566

Winner of Gourmand World Cookbook Awards 2021

The Arabic culinary tradition burst onto the scene in the middle of the tenth century when al-Warraq compiled The Book of Dishes, containing over six hundred recipes. It would take another three centuries for cookery books to be produced in Christian Europe. Until then, gastronomic writing remained the sole preserve of the Arab-Muslim world with cooking manuals and recipe books being written from Baghdad, Aleppo and Egypt in the East, to Muslim Spain and North Africa in the West.

Nine complete cookery books have survived from this time, containing around four thousand recipes. The Sultan’s Feast by the Egyptian scholar Ibn Mubarak Shah features more than 330 recipes, from bread-making and savoury stews, to roasts, sweets, pickles and condiments, as well as tips on a range of topics. Composed in the fifteenth century and available in English for the first time, this critical bilingual volume offers a unique insight into the world of medieval Arabic gastronomic writing.