Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
which could be currant, pomegranate or
saffron. Chardin noted five or six different
pilaws during a meal served by āh
Sulaymān for a Russian envoy, with gar-
lic crust, lamb, chicken, eggs stuffed with
meat, and with fish. He also gave more
than twenty as the total number of pilaw
varieties. Twenty-five kinds of pilaw are
mentioned in a Persian source from the
afawid period.
Then as now, meals were consumed
synchronically; unlike French cuisine,
there was no time sequence to the order
of eating the food and courses are not
divided. Kaempfer, describing a royal
banquet, noted, however, that confec-
tion and sweetmeats tended to precede
the main course. All Europeans com-
mented on the silence observed during
meals, their short duration, and the fact
that nothing was drunk until afterwards.
They also noted that no silverware was
used, except for a large wooden spoon
that was used for eating soup and drink-
ing the various juices that were served as
part of the meal. While ordinary Persians
ate from porcelain or earthenware, at the
court gold dishes were abundantly used as
well. Kaempfer estimated the total value
of the royal dishware at 10 million gold
ducats. Āār and turī (pickled vegetables)
served as condiments. Kaempfer describes
the desserts served on the occasion of an
audience: candied fruit, fresh fruit, vari-
ous kinds of cake and sweetmeats. Jam,
murabba , was very popular and came in
many varieties. Sugar was used in great
quantities in the ubiquitous confectionery.
According to De Bruyn, the Dutch East
India Company annually brought 12,000
packs at 150 pounds each to Ifahān.
Common people ordinarily consumed
bread, vegetables and fruit. Bread has
always been the staple for the over-
whelming majority of the population, and
its central role in the diet is reflected in
popular expressions and folklore. The
Caspian region, where bread has been
spurned as unhealthy until modern times,
is an exception. Types of bread used in
afawid times were remarkably similar
to the ones eaten today; such as lawa ,
thin unleavened bread that doubled as
a spoon and a napkin, and sangak , long
bread baked on pebbles. Herbert noted
how dates preserved in syrup mixed with
buttermilk was seen as a precious food.
He called the cheese dry, blue and hard,
as being worst on the Gulf coast and best
in Māzandarān. Butter came from the
tails of sheep. Nothing like restaurants
existed. However, given the prohibitive
cost of burning wood, many people ate at
the ubiquitous public food stalls, dukkān-i
abbāī , where simple hot rice dishes were
prepared.
Persia had since early mediaeval times
been a crossroads for vegetables and
fruits, serving as a source of diffusion or
an east-west conduit for such plants and
crops as sugar cane, lemons and sour
oranges, spinach and eggplant. In the
afawid period, the movement was gener-
ally in the opposite direction. Europeans
introduced parsley, asparagus, artichokes
and cauliflower into Persia, and these
were cultivated in the vegetable gardens
of īrāz and Ifahān.
The first cookbooks—as opposed to
texts in which food is described for its
medicinal use—also date back to the
afawid period. Of the two that have
come down to us, one, called Kārnāma dar
bāb-i abbāī wa anat-i ān , dates from the
time of āh Ismāīl I (early 16th cen-
tury) and was written as a gift to a noble-
man. The second, Maddat al-ayā. Risāla
dar ilm-i abbāī , was probably written
for āh Abbās by his chief cook, Nūr
Allāh, who may have been a descendant
of Muammad Alī Bāwarčī, and was per-
haps even commissioned by the ruler. It
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