Murri (condiment)
Murrī or almorí (in Andalusia) was a type of fermented condiment made with barley flour, known from Maghrebi and Arab cuisines. Almost every substantial dish in medieval Arab cuisine used murrī in small quantities. It could be used as a substitute for salt or sumac, and has been compared to soy sauce by Rudolf Grewe, Charles Perry, and others due to its high glutamates content and resultant umami flavor.[1][2]
History
There are two types of murri known from historical recipes that have survived into the present day. The
The authors of some Arabic
There has been much confusion over the exact nature of murri, the prevalent view being that it derived from the roman garum, a fish preparation. In fact the most common form to which the recipes refer is murri naqi made from cereal grain.
The recipe for murrī was mistranscribed with the fermenting stage omitted, in a 13th-century text Liber de Ferculis et Condimenti, where it was described as "salty water" elsewhere in the translation.[5]
Preparation
Traditionally, murrī production was undertaken annually in households at the end of March and continued over a period of 90 days.[4] Barley-based murrī entails the wrapping of raw barley dough in fig leaves which are left to sit for 40 days. The dough is then ground and mixed with water, salt, and usually additional flour. It is then left to ferment for another 40 days in a warm place. The resulting dark mahoghany brown paste, mixed with water to form a liquid, is murrī.[1]
A fast method for preparing murrī is to mix 2 parts barley flour to one part salt and make a loaf that is baked in the oven until hard and then pounded into crumbs to soak in water for a day and a night. This mixture, known as the first murri, is then strained and set aside. Then,
Murrī mixed with milk was known as kamakh.[6]
Charles Perry has noted that due to the methods of preparation and ingredients it is possible for murri to contain
See also
References
- ^ a b c Davidson et al., 2002, pp. 358-360.
- ^ Perry, Charles (April 1, 1998), "Rot of Ages", Los Angeles Times, retrieved 2014-09-29
- ^ a b c d Perry, Charles. Taste: Proceedings of the Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery.
- ^ a b c Jayyusi, 1992, p. 729.
- ^ Perry, Charles (October 31, 2001), "The Soy Sauce That Wasn't", Los Angeles Times, retrieved 2009-03-21
- ^ Newman CW, Newman RK (2006), "A Brief History of Barley Foods" (PDF), Cereal Foods World, 51 (1): 1–5, archived from the original (PDF) on 2007-10-16, retrieved 2009-03-21
Bibliography
- Davidson, Alan; Saberi, Helen; McGee, Harold (2002), The Wilder Shores of Gastronomy: Twenty Years of the Best Food Writing from the Journal Petits Propos Culinaires (Illustrated ed.), Ten Speed Press, ISBN 9781580084178
- Davis, Ralph Henry Carless; Mayr-Harting, Henry; Moore, Robert Ian (1985), Studies in medieval history presented to R.H.C. Davis (Illustrated ed.), Continuum International Publishing Group, ISBN 9780907628682
- Jayyusi, Salma Khadra; Marín, Manuela (1992), The Legacy of Muslim Spain (2nd, illustrated ed.), BRILL, ISBN 9789004095991
- David Martin Gitlitz, Linda Kay Davidson, A drizzle of honey: the lives and recipes of Spain's secret Jews, 1999. ISBN 0-312-19860-4. p. 20.