‘Mother of Happy Endings’ and the Indian Mirror

Abstract

The paper explores a thirteenth-century Andalusi text containing  a recipe in which ultra-thin sheets of pastry are intriguingly baked on a gadget the recipe called mir'at Hindiyya (Indian mirror). These sheets of bread, called ruqaq, were required for making an extraordinarily exquisite and elaborate sweet-savoury chicken pie, which the recipe nicknamed Umm al-Faraj (Mother of Happy Endings) and tries to uncover if a mirror was actually used, what type, why Indian and what it might have been made of.