Charles Perry (2) (1941–)

I have a good friend whose families were Marranos, secret Jews. They emigrated from Spain to Cuba and Venezuela sometime after the Expulsion in 1492. And, noting my surname Rovira, Ana María said, “That’s a Marrano name; did you know that?” And I certainly did not.

So, it’s possible that in the 13th century, wherever my father’s ancestors were living in Spain, they were cooking like this. I’d like to think so, as Claudia Roden, who writes the foreword, is herself a Sephardic show more Jew. “It was thrilling to know that our foods have a history. It confirmed our ancestry,” she writes. If so, I pity those poor, poor folk.

This Syrian cookbook was the Joy of Cooking of the High Middle Ages; an astounding number of copies, complete and partial, remain in existence. Amazingly, this, Charles Perry’s footnoted translation of the Topkapi manuscript, released in 2017, is the first one ever! But, for the most part, it’s something to peruse for its historical value rather than as the basis of any dish you’d feed someone you liked. (Sweet and sour breadcrumbs, or a dough-wrapped bone-in pullet anyone, anyone? Or how about using chicken skin to make sausages or to inflate and stuff with fried egg and onions before boiling or frying? The latter was deemed “an impressive dish” by the cookbook author. I’ll bet!)

Scents and Flavors, unsurprisingly, isn’t your average cookbook. It’s littered with prayers and notations that the recipe was made for an exalted person (e.g., “which I once made for my uncle Al-Malik Al-Ashraf, may God the Exalted shower him with mercy”). It also contains recipes for perfume, incense, medicine, antiperspirant, breath fresheners, body soap, clothes soap, hand-washing powder, clothes dye, hair dye, vinegars and pickled turnips (to last a year!), as well as food and beverages; and boasts ingredients like ambergris, willow water, sandalwood, musk, spikenard (whatever that is), fat lamb tail, tree moss, camphor, civet, Cornelian Cherry, myrtle, quince fuzz, borage (whatever that is), lily water, barberries, mastic resin (in food!) and rue.

This cookbook also demonstrates how extensive the Silk Road was, as the recipes call for North African soy sauce, bananas; Chinese cinnamon or Ceylonese cinnamon, depending on the recipe; white sugar, an incredible luxury, and betel nut, black pepper and ginger. These were recipes for the 1%, and make no mistake. Just glad that I wasn’t an invitee to enjoy Candied Chicken on Croutons, a very sweet pistachio-chicken porridge, Egg Cake in Glass Bottles, or Sanbüsak (boiled leg or joint meat pounded into a pulp and then mixed with spices and boiled yet again, served in a bread wrapper). show less

A terrific overview of the Bay Area Vortex. The book starts with the trial of Owsley Stanley, who would quickly go on to introduce high-quality (and at the time legal!) LSD to the Bay area and help kick-start the Summer of Love. Covering the rise, decline and eventual collapse of the Haight-Ashbury hippie scene, this is a detailed history that is alive with little details. Plenty of black and white photos help you set the scene. The author actually lived in the neighborhood at the time which show more gives the book an insider's feel.

Instead of focusing on just the music or just the drugs, Charles Perry covers all sorts of different things including the great concert posters and the artists who created them, the book stores, junk stores and coffee shops, the various big personalities and groups and their philosophies, the Grateful Dead, the Airplane, bananadeine, Ken Kesey and his acid tests, the Diggers, Sgt. Peppers and on and on. The book treats the hippies in a pretty even-handed way, showing their good side and their bad without ever feeling like it is idolizing or ridiculing what was happening. All in all, this book serves as a terrific companion to The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, but it also stands very well on its’ own. show less

I LOVED this book in high school. I used to have a goal then to own everything on the "Psychedelic 100" posted at the end of the book, and after perusing through this again recently, I think I might have to rekindle this goal.

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Just dorked out and was able to find about 70 of the 100 tracks on Spotify! Psych playlist, you are all mine. :)

Contains translated recipes with no adaptations, but does contain additional information on the sources used by these scholars.