Read Online In the Devil's Garden: A Sinful History of Forbidden Food by Stewart Lee Allen - Free Book Online

real punishment for these bon vivants, however, must be to watch the feasting upstairs in Heaven because, in the typically topsy-turvy logic of all religions, those who disdained dinner on Earth are rewarded with a celestial smorgasbord that would have left Trimalchio drooling. Most religions mention rivers of milk and delicious wine and clear-run honey, but Islam arguably provides the most details. Early Muslim scholars reported that chickens the size of young camels fell freshly fried at your feet. Fish liver seemed popular, as well as boiled and salted camel. Later, theologians decided that every palace in Heaven had “seventy tables in every house and on every table seventy different types of food.” That comes to forty-nine hundred courses per meal, dessert included. Al-Haythami, the medieval scholar who did the preceding math, however, failed to describe the exact dishes in his writings. For this we have to examine the menus served in Islam’s famous Paradise Gardens, designed to re-create the “Garden of Delights” where faithful Muslims spent eternity. The Koran describes heaven as a walled garden full of fountains and trees (the word
paradise
comes from an ancient Persian word that means “walled garden”). Some of these earthly gardens had fountains every 50 yards. Others featured declawed tigers to reflect the belief that men and animals lived harmoniously in Heaven. One turned the caliph’s entourage into weightless spirits by constructing elevated footpaths in a sea of flowering trees; from the palace, it appeared that the viziers were actually floating among the treetops.
    This obsessive re-creation of the afterlife went beyond mere landscaping. “Truly, the companions of the garden that day will be busy and merry,” claims the Koran, an innocent-sounding passage that was somehow interpreted as meaning that the faithful would be “busy and merry” deflowering virgins. The question is, how many? Our friend al-Haythami again provides the math. “A palace in paradise is made from a pearl; within are 70 courts of ruby and in every court, 70 houses of green emerald; in every house is 70 bedrooms, and in every bedroom, 70 sleeping mats; and on every mat, a woman.” This adds up to roughly 23 million lubricious nymphets for every man. Truly devout caliphs gathered the hugest of harems in order to prepare for the labor to come. Some went as far as to adorn their gardens with structures named the Hall of Mirrors, which were nothing but gargantuan domed bedrooms devoted exclusively to Allah’s labor.
    The caliphs were equally fastidious in re-creating the heavenly diet. Tenth-century Egyptian caliph al-Aziz had fresh cherries from Lebanon flown in, tied to the feet of carrier pigeons. His predecessor Khumarawayh preferred dates stuffed with almonds because that was the fruit most often mentioned as heavenly provender. He was particularly partial to consuming them while floating atop a pool of quicksilver set in the midst of his garden. Another popular dish was the sweet
judhaba
:
    Judhaba made of choicest rice,

as shining as a lover’s eyes;

How marvelous in hue it stands,

beneath the cook’s accomplished hands!
     
    Poetry like this would be recited as each dish arrived at the caliph’s table. When the guests were too stuffed to take another bite, the poets would extol the virtues of coming delights in order to revive their appetites.
    Here capers grace a sauce vermilion

whose fragrant odor to the soul are blown,

here pungent garlic meets the eager sight

and whets with savor sharp the appetite,

while olives turn to shadowed night the day,

and salted fish in slices rims the tray.
     
    Lamb appeared frequently on the menu, and flavors like saffron, rosewater, and cardamom dominated. Specific dishes would have included fried eggplant dressed in a saffron/sesame sauce (served cold), lamb covered in poppy seeds, fish stuffed with walnuts, cod in a sweet-and-sour raisin sauce, and chicken with dried