13th Century Spices for a 21st Century Kitchen

 

 

While skimming through historical cookbooks online for recipes for candies and sweets I came across a very simple spice mixture for savory dishes: One part pepper, two of caraway, three parts dry coriander; pound all that and sift and use.

This simple blend is in An Anonymous Andalusian Cookbook of the 13th Century as part of an extremely complex recipe: Preparation of a Tharda of Two Chickens, One Stuffed With the Other. One bird is stuffed with the minced meat of another along with the entrails of both with seasonings, onion, egg, cilantro, and nuts. The chicken recipe wasn’t something I wanted to tackle, but that blend of spices sounded intriguing. I hadn’t ever thought to combine coriander and caraway.
 

This blend is fantastic as a rub for pork chops. The person who wrote the recipe in the 13th century would undoubtedly be appalled. The original book was written in Arabic and also contained a few recipes attributed to Jewish sources. In that era the Iberian peninsula was a haven of tolerance where Islamic, Jewish, and Christian people lived in relative harmony. Here in the 21st century I do thank that anonymous cook for his spice blend and apologize for applying it to my tasty pork chops