On the medieval Arab-Muslim table — the sufra, the leather or cloth spread on which dishes are arranged — there is neither an entrée nor a dessert in the French style, but a simultaneous deployment of foods placed around the bread. You find long-simmered pot dishes (ṭabīkh), a fermented condiment that awakens everything (kāmakh), a sweet-and-sour drink to accompany, and sweets and dried fruits that circulate from the beginning to the end of the meal as of a journey. The court cooks of Baghdad and then Cairo followed collections like al-Warrāq's Kitāb al-Ṭabīkh (10th century), which classifies dishes by technique and propriety rather than by order of service.

A fermented barley sauce (sometimes with deliberately moldy flour), long matured in the sun with salt — the Arab equivalent of ancient garum and a distant cousin of soy sauce. A few drops bring that deep, salty-umami taste that structures the learned cuisine from Baghdad to Cairo. It is the soul of Abbasid taste: almost every savory dish receives a touch of it.