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

[Johnna Holloway]

You could go with a lemonade which traces to Egypt according to  
Clifford  Wright. I wrote in my article "Orange and Lemon Drinks of  
Summer"
  that
"Clifford Wright who is the author a number of popular Mediterranean  
cookbooks has a “History of Lemonade” posted on his website. He writes:
"It appears that the all-American summer drink, lemonade, may have had  
its origin in medieval Egypt. Although the lemon originates farther to  
the east, and lemonade may very well have been invented in one of the  
eastern countries, the earliest written evidence of lemonade comes  
from Egypt. The first reference to the lemon in Egypt is in the  
chronicles of the Persian poet and traveler Nasir-i-Khusraw  
(1003-1061?), who left a valuable account of life in Egypt under the  
Fatamid caliph al-Mustansir (1035-1094). The trade in lemon juice was  
quite considerable by 1104. We know from documents in the Cairo  
Geniza--records of the medieval Jewish community in Cairo from the  
tenth through thirteenth centuries--that bottles of lemon juice,  
qatarmizat, were made with lots of sugar and consumed locally and  
exported.""

Looks like 11th century and not 10th, but it would be another  
possibility. The new book Food and Foodways of Medieval Cairenes:  
Aspects of Life in an Islamic Metropolis of the Eastern Mediterranean  
also lists some others. Let me check and see what it says and get back  
to you about others.
Clifford Wright’s version of lemonade’s history may be found on his  
web page http://www.cliffordawright.com/history/lemonade.html

  Johnnae



On Mar 13, 2012, at 8:40 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.