Food Resources and their Transformation - Food Culture and Health in Pre-Modern Islamic Societies - page 149

open top, the so-called “eye” or “mouth”
fam , and its other apertures, aāb . The
earliest extant culinary manuscript, of late
4th/10th century Irāī provenance, pro-
vides a list of implements specifically used
in baking bread in a tannūr . These include
a dough board ( law) ; a small rolling pin
( awba ) for the ordinary loaf ( raīf ) and
a large one for the thin riā ; a feather for
coating the dough in certain preparations;
a wooden bowl ( afna or mian ) in which
the dough was mixed and a metal scraper
( miakk ) for cleaning it afterwards. Yeast
was kept in a wooden container called a
milab . A cloth ( mandīl) was used to wipe a
loaf clean before baking and another was
used for wiping down the oven to remove
unwanted moisture or condensation. A
poker ( innāra ) was used to remove the
loaf from the oven if it fell upon the floor
inside, and a metal instrument ( mirak )
was used for raking out the embers and
ash from the oven when baking was
finished. The tannūr was not used exclu-
sively for baking bread. A recipe for a
kind of chicken pie made in a pan ( milā )
is described as being lowered into the oven
to cook and another dish, a meat, rice and
vegetable casserole made in a pot ( idr )
was placed in the oven to finish cooking.
Both these dishes were called tannūriyya , or
oven-dish, which were often left to stew
gently overnight in a slowly cooling oven
and served the following day.
The second major cooking contrivance
found in the kitchen was known simply
as the “fire-place”, mustawad . This was
designed to accommodate several cook-
ing pots and/or pans side-by-side at the
same time. It was erected to about half-
a-person's height, giving easy access to
the cooking food and was provided with
vents allowing for an intake of air over the
coals and for the expulsion of smoke. It is
evident that many dishes required more
than one pot in their preparation, hence

several “elements” might be used in the
preparation of a single meal. Another,
apparently independent, type of mustawad
was recommended for the preparation of
sweetmeats. Its single element accommo-
dated a milā or tanīr , the vessels in which
sweetmeats were commonly made. These
dishes required long cooking over a low
heat accompanied by vigorous stirring of
the pan's contents. The shape and posi-
tion of this mustawad would have made
it easier to hold the pan and to control
the heat.
Al-Warrā's depiction of the mediae-
val batterie de cuisine continues with a list
of utensils employed in the preparation
of the innumerable main dishes. Cook-
ing pots ( udūr , sing. idr ) made of stone,
earthenware, copper or lead came in vari-
ous sizes. The largest pots were reported
to hold the carcasses of four goats. Such
cauldrons, however, were more apt to be
found in the palace kitchens or an army
field mess than in a domestic kitchen;
contemporary recipes do not suggest such
crude bulk of ingredients. Judging from
certain archaeological evidence, kiln pot-
tery vessels of the “cooking pot” and “cas-
serole” types appear more modest in size.
Remains from a Byzantine pottery factory
in Cyprus reveal that the largest restored
cooking pot item was 0.27 m high and
0.31 m at its greatest diameter; the small-
est was 0.135 m high and 0.21 at its great-
est diameter. Casseroles with lip-edge type
rims which were probably provided with
lids were smaller still, the largest restored
item being 0.11 m high and 0.27 m in
diameter. These vessel sizes seem appro-
priate to the needs of even large domestic
households.
Pans (sing. milā or milāt ) generally
used for frying fish and the like were made
of iron. A stone-made milā was used for
other purposes, although the distinction
between it and the former is unclear.