Anissa: It has been quite some time since the great Charles Perry wrote a guest post and I was delighted when he suggested mastic, one of my favourite ingredients, except that he is writing about it in the context of savoury cooking which is fascinating.

Charles: With its heady resinous aroma, mastic seems a natural flavoring for sweets. The Greeks  and Turks drink mastic syrup with coffee; they put it in ice cream and Turkish  delight. The Moroccans can’t seem to grind almonds without throwing in a  little mastic.

And yet medieval Arab cooks scarcely ever flavor sweets  with mastic – it was more likely to contribute its aroma to meat dishes. The  greatest mastic fan on record is Muhammad b. al-Hasan al-Baghdadi, because  mastic appears in more than half of the 96 red meat recipes in his 1226 book  Kitab al-Tabikh.

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