Eggplants in the 9th century

"It comes as a surprise that eggplant shows up so rarely in these recipes. In today’s Arab world, it is sayyid al-khudaar, the lord of vegetables, but at the time it was a recent import from India and not yet quite popular. It was considered impossibly bitter; in a widely repeated anecdote, a Bedouin declared that eggplant had “the color of a scorpion’s belly and the taste of a scorpion’s sting.” It was actually considered bad for the health. Doctors blamed it for everything from freckles and a hoarse throat to cancer and madness. Still, there are seven eggplant baaridah in this book, probably because a taste for eggplant first arose among the aristocracy. Two of the dishes are calledbaadhinjaan buran, “the eggplant of Buran,” after al-Ma’mun’s wife, whose month-long wedding party was a medieval byword for luxury. Today a vast range of dishes called burani orburaniyyah are made everywhere from Spain to India. The recipes in Kitab al-Tabikh, dating from only 50 or 60 years after her death, must be very close to the originals. One is simply fried eggplant slices sprinkled with murri, pepper and caraway. It’s rather good." (thanks Sami)