Letter: JRL SERIES A 1192

Description

Order to a pastry chef: "To the elder Abī Saʿd, may God preserve him: please take two copper coins as a deposit, and give the bearer a raṭl of well-done ringlets [ḥulayqāt, probably a type of doughnut]. If you make cakes tomorrow, prepare for me two raṭls of small cakes (kuʿaykāt) of the utmost smallness for me." Proof that cake-pops were invented in medieval Cairo? Goitein: "Cakes, called kaʿk in Arabic (a word that seems, however, not to be connected with its English equivalent), also were normally bought in the bazaar, and the name or designation ka'ki, or cake master, is rather frequent. Here is an order to a cake master, carefully written on a tiny piece of paper: The pastrycook, khamīrī, was another familiar figure." Goitein, Med. Soc. I, 114.