XI. Culinary Techniques of the Medieval Baghdadi Cuisine

The medieval Arabs recognized cooking as an art. In the preface to his thirteenth-century cookbook, al-Baghdadi says that ‘a cook should be intelligent, acquainted with the rules of cooking, and that he should have a flair for the art’. A prerequisite to these was the personal hygiene of the cook. He particularly elaborated on this, saying, the cook ‘must keep his nails constantly trimmed, not neglecting them, not allowing them to grow long’. Next follows thorough cleanliness of kitchen utensils and pots. Al-Warraq emphasizes this point by saying that what differentiates the food of the caliphs and that of the ordinary people was not ingredients as much as the utmost care taken in cleaning the ingredients as well as the pots. Some even went as far as saying that if it were left to them, they would recommend using a new pot every time they cooked a dish (al-Tujeebi).