The dastarkhan is the tablecloth spread on the ground around which the household gathers in medieval Central Asia. The meal is organized in courses: first non (bread), dried fruits, and tea; then shorba (soup); finally the main dish (osh or meat) on feast days, and sweets to close. For a scholar like Al-Marghinani, the daily dastarkhan remains frugal — bread, soup, fruits — and only becomes richer with meat and pilaf on holidays or to honor a guest.

Cumin — zira in Persian and Uzbek — is the queen spice of Ferghana cuisine and all of Transoxiana. Inseparable from pilaf, soups, and breads, it perfumes every dastarkhan. Al-Marghinani, who lived between Marghinan, Bukhara, and Samarkand, would have consumed it daily. Contemporary Islamic medical treatises also attribute digestive virtues to it.