An Egyptian recipe.
A while ago Philipp Stockhammer told me about a Medieval Egyptian cookbook, called „The sultan’s feast – a fifteenth-century Egyptian cookbook“. Of course, recipes from the 15th century AD are not directly comparable with those of the Bronze Age, but I thought I might find some inspiration. And indeed, I did! To be honest, I didn’t know where to start. So again, I thought I might begin with something simple: a recipe that somehow sounds like modern halva.
I just changed some spices. The original recipe uses musk – however I wasn’t sure if musk was already available for cooking in the Bronze Age Mediterranean. Instead I used cinnamon and saffron. Cinnamon was recently traced in Bronze Age vessels at the coast of Israel. We know saffron from Bronze Age frescos from the aegean world and it was harvested there too.
Ingredients:
- 160g flour
- 130g honey
- 50 ml sesame oil
- 3 tsp rose water
- 1 tsp cinnamon
- some saffron
Preparation:
„Recipe for a type of Persian confection. [Take] finely milled sieved flour, bee honey, sesame oil, saffron, musk and rose water. Toast the flour until it turns brown, but not burnt. Put the honey in an earthenware pan and bring to a boil, [gradually] adding the flour to it. Stir and pour in the sesame oil, musk and rose water. Sprinkle in the sesame oil little by little until everything is done. Transfer to platters and add a bit of musk and rose water.“
From: Ibn Mubārak Shāh, The sultan’s feast. A fiftheen-century egyptian cookbook (London 2020), p.68.
What I did, is a little bit different, but the dessert that turned out is really quite similar to halva.
Roast the flour until it turns brown and cook the honey. Mix flour, honey and sesame oil while stirring. Add cinnamon, rose water and saffron. Now place the hot sweet into small cake pans and let it cool down. Sprinkle with sesame seeds before serving the Ancient Egyptian Halva.
The texture of the dessert isn’t quite like halva, it’s much more solid. It tastes like a kind of honey candy, and I can’t decide if I like it or not. Somebody (who decided she liked the dessert) told me, the consistency was more like a cookie than halva, so maybe the Ancient Egyptian Halva is more of a cookie with the taste of halva!
But if you like, decide for yourself and try the recipe!
Luise´s Bronze Age Feast 