Middle Eastern cuisine
type of regional cuisine
Middle Eastern cuisine includes a number of cuisines from the Middle East. Common ingredients include olives and olive oil, pitas, honey, sesame seeds, dates, sumac, chickpeas, mint, rice and parsley, and popular dishes include kebabs, dolmas, falafel, baklava, yogurt, doner kebab, shawarma and mulukhiyah.
Geography
The exact countries considered to be part of the Middle East are difficult to determine as the definition has changed over time and from source to source. Currently, the countries that are considered to comprise the Middle East are: Bahrain, Cyprus, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Palestine, Lebanon, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, and Yemen, including the various ethnic, cultural, religious and ethno-linguistic groups within these nations.
Varieties
History and influences
The Middle East incorporates the Fertile Crescent, including Mesopotamia (Sumer, Akkad, Assyria and Babylonia) where wheat was first cultivated, followed by rye, barley, lentils, beans, pistachios, figs, pomegranates, dates and other regional staples. The domestication of sheep, goats and cattle took place in the region as well. Fermentation was also discovered there, in order to leaven bread and make beer in Ancient Mesopotamia and Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia. Additionally, the earliest written recipes come from that region.
As a crossroad between Europe, North Africa, and Asia, it has been a hub of food and recipe exchange. During the first Persian Empire (ca.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Middle Eastern cuisine” is type of regional cuisine. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Middle, Eastern and cuisine, not as a finished interpretation.
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This entry incorporates text from “Middle Eastern cuisine” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.