SC - Ingredient question

[needlwitch@msn.com]

- -----Original Message-----
From: DAVIS, VICTORIA <VICTORIA.DAVIS at aeroquip.com>
To: 'SCA-Cooks at Ansteorra.ORG' <SCA-Cooks at Ansteorra.ORG>
Date: Tuesday, October 06, 1998 12:31 PM
Subject: SC - Ingredient question


>I am working on a Spanish/Andalusian feast and have come across the
>ingredient "murri" several times, especially in relation to stuffed
>eggs.
>
>Does anyone know what this is and where I could find it or how to make
>it?  (BTW, I am going to a Middle Eastern specialty store this weekend.)
>
>Thanks in advance,
>Failenn
Murri

The 13th-century Islamic recipes frequently contain an ingredient translated
as "murri" or "almori." It is one of a group of condiments that were popular
in early Islamic cooking and vanished sometime after the fourteenth century.
Al-Baghdadi gives the following recipes for murri; if you try one and it
works out, let me know. According to Charles Perry, the translator of the
Kitab al Tibakhah mentioned above, the penny-royal in these recipes is a
mis-translation and should be budhaj (rotted barley). He gives the following
instructions for making budhaj:


"All the recipes concur that budhaj was made from barley flour (or a mixture
of barley and wheat) kneaded without leaven or salt. Loaves of this dough
were rotted, generally in closed containers for 40 days, and then dried and
ground into flour for further rotting into the condiments."
(First recipe)


Take 5 ratls each of penny-royal and flour. Make the flour into a good dough
without leaven or salt, bake, and leave until dry. Then grind up fine with
the penny-royal, knead into a green trough with a third the quantity of
salt, and put out into the sun for 40 days in the heat of the summer,
kneading every day at dawn and evening, and sprinkling with water. When
black, put into conserving jars, cover with an equal quantity of water,
stirring morning and evening: then strain it into the first murri. Add
cinnamon, saffron and some aromatic herbs.
(Second recipe)


Take penny-royal and wheaten or barley flour, make into a dry dough with hot
water, using no leaven or salt, and bake into a loaf with a hole in the
middle. Wrap in fig leaves, stuff into a preserving-jar, and leave in the
shade until fetid. Then remove and dry.
As you can see, making murri is an elaborate process, and tasting
unsuccessful experiments might be a hazardous one; Charles Perry, who has
done experiments along these lines, warns that the products may be seriously
carcinogenic.

In addition to the surviving recipes for murri, there are also at least two
surviving references to what was apparently a fake murri, a substitute made
by a much simpler process. If one cannot have real murri, period fake murri
seems like the next best thing. The recipe is as follows:

Byzantine Murri

Kitab Wasf, Sina'ah 52, p. 56, Sina'ah 51, p. 65: Charles Perry tr.

Description of byzantine murri [made] right away: There is taken, upon the
name of God the Most High, of honey scorched in a nuqrah [perhaps this word
means 'a silver vessel'], three ratls; pounded scorched oven bread, ten
loaves; starch, half a ratl; roasted anise, fennel and nigella, two uqiyahs
of each; byzantine saffron, an uqiya; celery seed, an uqiyah; syrian carob,
half a ratl; fifty peeled walnuts, as much as half a ratl; split quinces,
five; salt, half a makkuk dissolved in honey; thirty ratls water; and the
rest of the ingredients are thrown on it, and it is boiled on a slow flame
until a third of the water is absorbed. Then it is strained well in a clean
nosebag of hair. It is taken up in a greased glass or pottery vessel with a
narrow top. A little lemon from Takranjiya (? Sina'ah 51 has Bakr Fahr) is
thrown on it, and if it suits that a little water is thrown on the dough and
it is boiled upon it and strained, it would be a second (infusion). The
weights and measurements that are given are Antiochan and Zahiri [as] in
Mayyafariqin.

1 ratl = 12 uqiya = 1 pint
1 Makkuk = 7.5-18.8 liters dry measure

Thorbjorn the Cook
Shittemwoode/Antir
{Northwest Washington}

"Life is a test. Life is only a test. If this had been a real Life,
you would have been given instructions on where to go
and what to do."



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