[Sca-cooks] Ibn Sayyar al-Warraq feast - recipe frustration

[Susan Fox]

I would go through the book and observe what fruits and herbs were 
listed and use those as a simple syrup base.  Date, fig, pomegranate, 
lemon are mentioned in various contexts.  Then there is that tale by 
badi' al-Zaman al-Hamadhani about how 'Isa "treated" his good friend 
'Abu Zaid' to a great meal and then went off in search of ice water, 
sticking 'Abu Zaid' with the check.    ["What to order in Ninth Century 
Baghdad' essay by Charles Perry, in MEDIEVAL ARAB COOKERY.]

Yep, we just documented ice water.

Cheers,
Selene C.

On 3/13/12 5:40 PM, lilinah at earthlink.net wrote:
> I'm still constructing my menu for my Ibn Sayyar al-Warraq feast. I'm hitting one tough spot. Fruit syrups for beverages.
>
> ISaW only includes recipes for wine and beer (can't provide alcoholic drinks for an SCA feast), near beer (not my area of expertise and really time and space consuming), and a range of more medicinal beverages. Some involved fruit bases, but they are not general beverages. He recommends sakajubin and jullab at the end of the feast, so they're do-able.
>
> I know that fruit syrups were drunk at this time, but i don't have a handy reference for which ones. There are quite a few fruit syrup recipes in the much later Andalusian cookbook - some but not all medicinal. There is a huge list from 15th and 16th c. Ottoman documents.
>
> So, does anyone know of a source from the same time as ISaW (9th&  10th c.) that mentions what fruits were used to make beverage syrups?
>
> Thanks,
> Urtatim (that's err-tah-TEEM)