[Sca-cooks] Sca-cooks Digest, Vol 98, Issue 1

[lilinah at earthlink.net]

Susan Fox wrote:
> A question:nI see in the Miscellany that the Barmakiya recipe does 
> specify lamb along with the various poultry options. Was this common? 
> "Fat meat" is usually assumed to be mutton, but is that obligatory? I 
> have been justifying Fesanjan at SCA events [yes, it is a modern 
> favorite, but I keep getting requests] with the following:
>
> NARSUN, from THE DESCRIPTION OF FAMILIAR FOODS [Kitab wasf al-at'ima 
> al-mu'tada) translated by Charles Perry.
SNIP

Fesenjan is a regional Persian dish, which was not known until fairly recently in other parts of Persia. It is traditionally and most typically cooked with duck. I have also heard that it can be cooked with pheasant or chicken. I have never heard of it being cooked with lamb.

There are other recipes in the historical Middle Eastern cookbook corpus that say to substitute one for the other -- chicken or lamb -- and a few that use both. But i would say that it is not most which acknowledge the interchangeability, only a few. Lamb (or mutton) was common. Chicken was generally more expensive.

Urtatim