“Take large fine-tasting carrots, lightly scrape their skins, cut them in half lengthwise, and then split each half into two pieces.” For centuries, that’s as far as any cook could get when preparing “A dish [of carrots in sauce]” from Ibn Razīn al-Tujībī’s Fiḍālat al-Khiwān fī Ṭayyibāt al-Ṭaʿām wa-l-Alwān (Best of Delectable Foods and Dishes from al-Andalus and al-Maghrib), a cookbook composed in Tunis around 1260. The rest of the recipe (more on that later), together with dozens of others, disappeared sometime after the late 1600s. Most of the cookbook’s…
