"Moorish Recipes" by John, Fourth Marquis of Bute

I'm afraid I have a secret shame which is ebay addiction. Every day I log on an scan through the books on offer in the hope of getting that special high that comes from finding something truely interesting. Mostly I get out bid, especially on nice leather bound editions, but I have had a great deal of luck with scruffy, broken-spined, down-on-their-luck books which nobody else wants...

One great find was "Moorish Recipes" collected and compiled by John, 4th Marquiss of Bute. This is the first cookbook on Moroccan food published for many decades and certainly the first in English John Crichton-Stuart, 4th Marquess of Bute (1881-1947), was a Scottish peer, descendant of the 14th-Century Scottish King Robert III and quite fabulously wealthy. He was also very interested in the culture of Morocco (where he was the largest foreign landowner at the time), taking time to learn about the food of the region and built the Moorish style El Minzah Hotel in Tangier. "Moorish Recipes" was originally published for private circulation in 1954, but a trade edition soon followed in 1955. While book states that the recipes are "the Marrakesh taste" they actually seem to have been collected in Tangier in the home of the  Mebebbi family. Paula Wolfert has told me that present day members of the Mebebbi family indicate that recipes were gathered from fine homes in Tetouan and Tangier.

This book is not well known and has suffered by comparison to Madame Guinaudeau's uttery charming "Fes Vu par sa Cuisine" (1958, published in English translation as Moroccan Cooking: Recipes from Fez). I'm am very far from having any real knowledge of North African food, but several things about the recipes in "Moorish Recipes" strike me as a sincere attempt to record authentic recipes. First of all there is the use of Arabic script for all of the recipes and the foreward, the first recipe is a very detailed discription for producing Warka, the use of olive oil rather then butter (The use of olive oil is interestng as at this point you would be lucky to get olive oil in a British chemist, if at all) and the fact that the book was not published by the author for public distribution, rather it seems to be a private project. Sure there are errors and substitutions, but I'm sure that cook book authors now have to make substitutions and use personal, subjective judgement when it comes to publishing a representive recipe of a particular cultures cuisine for an American or British audience.

I have adapted one recipe from the book below and provided a complete list of recipes at the end of the article out of interest.

Above: "Suery" (Souiri)

This is an unusual egg set dish from Morocco, in fact it resembles Tunisian tagine and ma'qudas more then anything. Paula Wolfert has told me that this dish is considered a failed version of  Djej Mefenned, in which a whole chicken is fried while at the same time bastes it with the seasoned eggs,this results in a chicken coated with a golden shell of egg. I have made this dish (based on the recipe from Paula's "Good Food from Morocco") and it is delicious. Suery is failed, but less technically challenging. I have adapted the original recipe as I didn't like the idea of picking chicken bones out of the finished dish (I wanted to feed this to my 17 month son), but still wanted to retain the flavour. Ideally the eggs should be just set so it is best to serve if from the cooking vessel. The presence of the aromatic preserved lemon provides a vital counter-point in flavour to the richness of the dish. Lemon juice is also a good addition. The finished dish should be juicy chunks of chicken set in a matrix of aromatic egg, not flavourless rags of chicken flesh in an omlette.

Ingredients:

Chicken
1 tsp salt
1 tsp pepper
1 tsp ginger
1 tsp tumeric
1 Tsp finely choppedcoriander
4 Tsp finely chopped parsley
2 large onions, finely chopped
1 small piece cinnamon bark
150 gm olive oil
½ tsp powdered cinnamon
1/2 preserved lemon (peel only)
6 eggs

Method:

Mix together chicken, salt, pepper, ginger, turmeric, coriander, 1 Tsp parsley, two large onions, cinnamon bark, olive oil and 400 ml of water.

Simmer for an hour, or until tender. Remove chicken from broth and allow to cool. Strain broth and reduce to 1 cup in volume. Skim off the fat.

Beat eggs with remaining parsley and the lemon peel.

Remove flesh from chicken and shred, place this in a bowl, sprinkle with powdered cinnamon.

Mix together the egg mixture and chicken broth, and pour over the chicken, cook bottom for mixture until just set and glaze the top under the grill. The mixture should be set, but not too hard. Lemon juice can be poured on if desired.

Complete List of Recipes: Should you be interested in any of these recipes, please contact me and I will provide adapted version of the original.

Pastry
Kufta, soup
Herrera, kind of soup
Mehalis, kind of pudding
Zeilook, eggplant mixed with olive oil
Bistaela I, chicken with eggs
Bistaela II
Sfa Merduma, dried kuskus with chicken
Dejaj Mafooar, chicken steamed
Dejaj Macfool ma Matisha, chicken covered with tomato
Suery, chicken with lemon
Dejaj bil food, chicken with broad beans
Makalli, chicken fried in oil
Lema ma’amara I
Lema ma’amara II
Dejaj mahammara, roast chicken
Dejaj meslook, boiled chicken
Frach bil hamus
Treed, a famous Arab dish
Emsharmel, chicken cooked in oil
Frach bil looz, pigeons with almonds
Frach bil shereea, pigeons with vermicelli
Shton, whitebait
Shton Makalli, whitebait
Samak meslook, boiled fish
Hut masmar, large fish
Hut mahshi, stuffed fish
Dulaa
Mahshi I
Mahshi II
Macfool ma Asel
Jibana bil gub
Quaah
Kabab emsharmel, cooked meat with lemon
Mderbel
Etfaya, meat fried with olive oil and almonds
El Kefta, minced meat – rissole
Macfool bil croombe
Kibdha, liver fried
Moch, sheep brains
Lerrnib, hare
Kuskusa
Kuskusa, mutton I
Kuskusa, mutton II
Kuskusa, onion
Ktaif
Braewats, almond
Braewats, rice
Makalli, raiff, fried loaf
Raiff, loaf
Raiff of egg
Raiff of cheese
Miluy
Bughreer
Mahansha, sweet with almonds
Greewush, a sweet eaten during the month of Ramadan
Leem el mseir, preserved citron
Khubz el jarade, locust bread

Comments

[The Old Foodie.]

That book looks like a real little treasure! When was it published? Do you know anything about the Marquis?

[Adam Balic]

Hi Janet,

you caught me in mid-post! You can see now that I have added the little information that I could find on the book and the man.

[Diana Buja]

Adam - What a great find; I'd be interested in the following when you have time;

Shton, whitebait
Shton Makalli, whitebait
Etfaya, meat fried with olive oil and almonds
Khubz el jarade, locust bread

merci Diana

[Adam]

Hi Diana,

great to hear from you. I will have some time next week to go through these recipes, so I will post about them then.

[Alex]

I came across the title of this book from a short review by Elizabeth David, reissued in her book "An omelette and a glass of wine". So I did some googling and found out that it was originally published privately by the Marquis for his friends limited to 185 numbered copies.

This is the kind of cook book I like. More a description of food and it's preparation rather than trying to adapt a recipe to a modern kitchen.

Luckily, Just now, I found an early numbered copy cheaper than the current reprint!

Looking forward to reading this.

[bildekor]

Quite nicely written actually, i like it. :)

[bildekor]

Oh.. i can taste it all the way. :D

[Ann]

I realize this post is old, but I just received a copy of this book and am wondering if the Macfool is what we call tajine? Have you tried making it from this book? Thanks!

[Adam Balic]

Hi Ann,

I guess the short answer is that a tagine is a dish cooked in a tagine cooking vessel. In Morocco this would be the two part vessel with a conical top, in Tunisia the conical top is missing and and in Egypt it is similar to a conventional casserole dish.

Looking at this recipe it isn't described as either a tagine or cooked in a tagine, so technically not a tagine in this case. I'd cook it in a broad shallow dish.

The recipes in this book are well rsearched and work well. But they are old fashioned and have some oddities ("saffron bark" for instance). The amount of olive oil in some recipes is while authentic for the recipes time and place of origin, might be a bit heavy on for modern palates also for instance.

[Emma]

Hi, I used lived in Morocco when I was a kid and I loved Herrera but have never been able to make it taste as good- any chance you could send me the recipe?

[Adam Balic]

Hi Emma,

the recipe is given as: 10.5 OZ Mutton cut up finely, 2 Tbspn Chervil (almost certainly coriander), pepper 1 tspn, saffron pinch, butter 0.5 tspn, salt 0.5 tspn, onion 2 small chopped, lentils 4 Tbspn, rice 3 Tbspn, Flour 2 Tbspn mixed with 4 Tbspn of water and left overnight. 2 eggs.

Put mutton, coriander, butter, pepper, saffron, salt, onions, 3.5 pints of water into a pot. Boil 3/4 hour then add lentils, boil for a further 15 minutes, add rice and flour water, boil for a further 15 minutes. Whip eggs and add to pot [while stirring]. Cook for a further five minutes and serve.

You might be interested to know that the similarity in the name of this recipe and the Tunisian chillie condiment "harisa" is due to the fact that their names share the same root, "harasa" which means to pound or crush. There are recipes for the meat porridge version going back to the medieval period. It is an ancient dish.