Plucky Sweets

Chicken for dessert? Eeoo. Most Americans are revolted when they hear about the Turkish tavuk gogsu, which is basically rice pudding flavored with chicken breast cooked and then picked apart until it becomes like threads. If you don’t tell them there’s chicken in the dish, though, they’re likely to say, “My, what’s that mysterious, intriguing spice?”

Actually, the strict distinction between the meat course and dessert is unique to the modern European dining pattern. Even in Europe, hosts used to show off their generosity in earlier centuries by putting sugar in any course at all, because sugar was once rare and expensive.

The most admired dessert in medieval Europe, blancmanger, was identical to tavuk gogsu except that it often contained almond milk instead of cow’s milk along with the rice, chicken and sugar. Meanwhile, cooks throughout the medieval Muslim world were making ma^mu^niyya, a dish named for a 9th century Caliph of Baghdad, which was rice or semolina pudding garnished with pistachios and pounded roast chicken.

And in medieval Spain, you could get julla^biyya, which was candied chicken. First you stewed your chicken. Then you made a syrup with rose water, spices and 3 pounds of sugar. “When it is thick,” the recipe says, “cut it with some musk and camphor dissolved in good rose water.

“Then put in the chicken already mentioned,” the recipe continues, “and cover it so the syrup fills it and thickens on it. Then remove the kettle from the fire and leave it until the syrup thickens on the sides of the chicken.” When it is ready, the recipe adds, it should have the glossy look of citrus peel.