The Sultan's Feast: A Fifteenth-Century Egyptian Cookbook vs Arab Cooking on a Prairie Homestead

Buy The Sultan's Feast if you want a historical source: a bilingual critical edition of a real fifteenth-century Egyptian cookbook, with over 330 recipes and the original Arabic facing the English. Buy Arab Cooking on a Prairie Homestead if you want to cook: a memoir plus more than 200 adapted Syrian-Lebanese recipes built around prairie ingredients. The Sultan's Feast is the scholarly volume, edited and translated for the first time into English; the Salloum book is the warmer, more practical read, and its new edition adds recollections to the recipes.

• Choose The Sultan's Feast if you want a bilingual primary text with the Arabic alongside the English and care more about medieval culinary history than about cooking from it tonight.
• Choose Arab Cooking on a Prairie Homestead if you want a memoir with workable family recipes and the story of Syrian immigrants on the Canadian plains.