Mezze

In medieval times, these dishes and foods were collectively called naql because the drinkers alternated between nibbling on them and sipping their wine. Evidently, the modern name mezze has affinities with such traditions because one of the names of wine was al-muzza, which was synonymous with ‘delicious wine,’ somewhat sweet and bitter, or having a pleasant slight tongue-bite to it. Muzz was also descriptive of a sweet and sour taste. Mezze may also mean ‘a sip’. To enjoy wine, the drinkers were supposed to take it slowly and in sips until they got intoxicated. From the fifteenth-century Indian cookbook Ni’matnama, which reveals considerable affinities with the Abbasid cuisine, we know that such naql dishes have already started to be called mezze, translated as ‘tidbits’.