[Sca-cooks] I have answered my own questions- Persian cooking manuscripts

[Jim and Andi Houston]

From:

http://www.iranica.com/articles/cookbooks-classical-in-persian

 

Although the Arabic cookbooks written under the rule of the ʿAbbasid caliphs (see, e.g., Ebn Sayyār; Ebn Razīn) include some recipes with Persian names and clearly derived from Persian cuisine (cf. Ṭabarī, tr., I, p. 41 n. 152), the earliest classical cookbooks in Per­sian that have survived are two volumes from the Safavid period. The older one is the Kār-nāma dar bāb-e ṭabbāḵī wa ṣaṇʿat-e ān “Manual on cooking and its craft,” written in 927/1521 by Ḥājī Moḥammad-ʿAlī Bāvaṛčī Baḡdādī for an aristocratic patron at the end of the reign of Shah Esmāʿīl I Ṣafawī (907-30/1501-24). The book originally contained twenty-six chapters, listed by the author in his introduction, but chapters 23-26 are missing from the unique surviving manuscript (University of Tehran, Central Library, ms. 9701; ed. Afšār, p. xxix). The author claimed that his book was the first text of its kind on “cooking and its craft” (p. 37). The recipes include measurements for ingredients; often detailed directions for the prepa­ration of dishes, including the types of utensils and pots to be used; and instructions for decorating and serving them. In general the ingredients and their combinations in various recipes do not differ signifi­cantly from those in use today. The large quantities specified, as well as the generous use of such luxury ingredients as saffron, suggest that these dishes were prepared for large aristocratic households, even though in his introduction Bāvaṛčī claimed to have written it “for the benefit of the nobility, as well as the public” (p. 36). TheKār-nāma was most probably a manual for would-be chefs and apprentice cooks. Each chapter is devoted to one category or subcategory of food, in­cluding one chapter on komāj (pies); five chapters on āš, šūrba, and harīsa (varieties of potages and soups); six chapters on rice dishes; and chapters on qalya (fricassee), kabobs, and confections.

 

The second surviving Safavid cookbook, Māddat al-ḥayāt, resāla dar ʿelm-e ṭabbākī “The substance of life, a treatise on the art of cooking,” was written about seventy-six years after the Kār-nāma by Nūr-Allāh, a chef for Shah ʿAbbās I (r. 996-1038/1588-1629; Afšār, p. xxx). The introduction to the Māddat al-ḥayātincludes elaborate praise of God, the prophets, the imams, and the shah, as well as a definition of a master chef. It is followed by six chapters on the preparation of various dishes: four on rice dishes, one on qalya, and one on āš. The measurements and directions are not as detailed as in the Kār-nāma. The information pro­vided is about dishes prepared at the royal court, including references to a few that had been created or improved by the shahs themselves; other famous contemporary cooks and their specialties are also mentioned (pp. 199, 201, 205-06, 215, 218, 223, 252). On the whole, however, Māddat al-ḥayāt is less useful than the Kār-nāma as a manual for cooks.

 

However, neither seems to have been translated, dammit.

Madhavi