The Sultan's Feast: A Fifteenth-Century Egyptian Cookbook

The Arabic culinary tradition burst onto the scene in the middle of the tenth century, when al-Warraq compiled a culinary treatise titled al-Kitab al-Tabikh, The Book of Dishes, containing over 600 recipes. However, it would take another three centuries for cookery books to be produced in the European continent. For centuries to come, gastronomic writing would remain the sole preserve of the Arab-Muslim world, with cooking manuals and recipe books being produced from Baghdad, Aleppo and Egypt in the East, to Muslim Spain, Morocco and Tunisia in the West.

A total of nine complete cookery books have survived from this time, containing nearly three thousand recipes. First published in the fifteenth century, The Sultan's Feast by the Egyptian Ibn Mubarak Shah features more than 330 recipes, from bread-making and savoury stews, to sweets, pickling and aromatics, as well as tips on a range of topics.

Available in English for the first time, this is the last known medieval Arabic cookery book. A bilingual reader that offers a unique and fascinating insight into the rich Arab culinary tradition in the Middle Ages.