Learning through making: My adventure with medieval Egyptian cooking
As part of a class this spring on food in the Islamic Middle East, Library Assistant Rachael Schechter learned to cook jawādhib al-khashkhāsh, or bread pudding with poppy seeds, using one of the many cookbooks in the Penn Libraries collections.
I took a class last spring with Penn Professor of Modern Middle Eastern and North African History Heather Sharkey, "Food in the Islamic Middle East: History, Memory, Identity." One of the assignments asked us to use a cookbook from the Penn Libraries collection to make a dish from an assigned country. Here’s how my food adventure went! Note: be aware that this recipe includes meat and this article includes pictures of raw chicken.
I like a challenge, so when one of our readings in the first week of class mentioned jawādhib al-khashkhāsh, or bread pudding with poppy seeds, a dish that was common in medieval Arabic cookbooks that seems pretty unusual today, I knew I wanted to try making it. I set out to do so based on a version of the recipe I noticed in Treasure Trove of Benefits and Variety at the Table: A Fourteenth-Century Egyptian Cookbook, translated by Nawal Nasrallah from an unattributed manuscript.
![Page from a cookbook that reads, " Take 2 ratls (2 pounds) sugar, and mix it with ½ ratl poppy seeds. (8or) [sic] Color it with saffron, and let it boil [with some added water] until it thickens. Some people use honey [instead of sugar], and when it thickens it is spread between two layers of thin sheets of ruqāq bread, [and then placed in the tannur oven] with a [roasting] chicken rubbed with saffron hung above it."](/sites/default/files/2026-07/Picture2%20-%20recipe.png)
First, I had to figure out what pudding meant. From a United States perspective, my expectation is that pudding contains milk and starch that is gently cooked and stabilized until it has a jiggly texture. Based on the ingredient list, I was pretty sure that was not the goal of this recipe. In the United Kingdom, however, 'pudding' is a much more generic term — the category includes not only many sweets, but also some savory dishes as well. I did a quick search for information about the translator, Nawal Nasrallah, and found that her biography on her website identifies her as Iraqi. Iraq was under a British administration and educational systems for 12 years, and that probably affected how she translated the name of the dish.
I already had sugar and poppy seeds in my pantry, but I was pretty sure I didn’t want to use two pounds of sugar all at once! Instead of going by the provided measurements, I decided to look at it as a ratio of four parts sugar to one part poppy seeds. The recipe calls for cooking the sugar, and the translator suggested that a small amount of water will help boil the sugar. Since I had already bloomed saffron in some water, I added that to the sugar.
My next question, and what proved to be the trickiest one, was what sort of bread to use. The recipe calls for “two layers of thin sheets of ruqāq bread.” The glossary in this cookbook suggests lavash bread, but most of the lavash bread I’ve encountered at West Philly grocery stores is thick enough to make a sturdy wrapped sandwich. When I investigated recipes using ruqāq on YouTube, they were usually thin, brittle, dried flatbreads that needed to be rehydrated before they could bend. I came up with two plans — first, I would learn how to make ruqāq myself, and second, I would experiment with finding a better, store-bought substitute.
To make the flatbread, I acquired a tava (a type of frying pan used in cuisines of South, Central, and West Asia) and again investigated several different videos on YouTube. I found that street vendors and professional cooks usually make a sticky dough, with one recipe calling for equal parts water and flour. Home cooks, however, tend to work with a crepe-like batter that is three or four parts water to one part flour. Aiming for a more professional result, I mixed up a dough with equal parts water and flour and let it hydrate overnight. I was pleased that it successfully relaxed into the texture I was hoping for. I heated up the tava over moderate heat, lightly oiled the surface, and waited until the surface had properly heated.
I almost immediately learned why home cooks use batter and professionals use dough — since my tava was nonstick, the dough didn’t grab the surface in a way that would be necessary to get it spread into a thin layer. To solve the problem, I added more water to the dough and thinned it into a batter. The result was not the prettiest crepe, but it was satisfyingly flatbread-like. I left it wrapped only in cloth overnight to dry out a little.
Next, I went looking for my pre-made flatbread. I visited a franchise branch of Cousins Market in northeast Philadelphia, where I bought both thin, flat sheets of pita, as well as a package of marqāq/markouk, another type of flatbread. Now I had three good options!
For the next part of the recipe, I was supposed to cook these syrup-filled breads underneath a “chicken rubbed with saffron.” I checked the rest of the cookbook, and found a recipe for rotisserie roasting a chicken, dajāja karnadāj, in which the chicken is cooked “with walnut and almond oil mixed with a bit of salt and saffron.” Since I was working in a little home oven and did not have a rotisserie option, I suspended a chicken thigh over each casserole dish with skewers to keep it above the breads.
I had just one more experiment for this recipe! My mother taught me to make saffron rice by crumbling the threads directly in the water right before boiling, and I later learned to spread the color more evenly by soaking saffron (blooming it) in water ahead of time. Since I did not want to add water to a roast, I decided to see whether saffron would bloom in oil. I put the threads into a small jar with almond oil about 72 hours ahead of time. I was surprised to find no color change at all in the oil, so I sprinkled a little saffron and salt directly on the chicken thighs and basted with the oil mixture. I didn’t get much color change to the chicken, but it did have a faint taste of saffron if you knew to look for it.
Finally, I cooked the chicken and breads in the oven at 350 degrees Fahrenheit until the juices in the chicken ran clear when I poked it with a knife. I was not expecting a particularly significant difference in results from the breads because they seemed pretty similar at the assembly stage, but there was a clear winner in my opinion. The homemade flatbreads were thicker in spots and were tough to chew through once they were candied by the sugar filling. The thin pita sheets were fine but definitely tasted more like an interesting food experiment than a dish I would make for company. The markouk was the best by far! It got a crispy, phyllo-like texture that shattered with the sugar. The poppy seeds made a richer flavor and an interesting texture contrast. The bread itself took on a more toasted flavor that balanced the sugariness. Surprisingly, the flavor from the chicken drippings also worked very well with the rest of the dish.
The final dish was exceedingly sweet, so I probably would not make it again unless I was cooking for a large group that was open to experimentation. I could only sample a small sliver of each variation, and I’ve been eating small portions of it as candied dessert each day since. As I’m writing this, there’s still quite a bit left!
Want to go on your own cooking adventure? Check out the cookbooks in our Featured Books display on the first floor of the Van Pelt-Dietrich Library Center through August 14 or find even more cookbooks in our catalog.
Date
July 22, 2026