The English - Arabic Cookery Book Joly, E. Gertrude

Original blue wraps black-titled in English and Arabic 17x24cm. Printed by Dar-Al-Hayat, Beirut, on economy paper, June 1950. 239, (17)pp parallel English and Arabic texts with several b/w illustrated adverts primarily about housekeeping, supplies, and entertaining. Covers good, marked with a patch of scuffing to the front, interiors generally very good, browned. Scarce: Worldcat and Library Hub locate 14 institutional copies (OCLC 3231076). Gertrude Joly studied and practiced cookery as a hobby. She worked at the British Syrian Training College in Beirut, then during WW2 headed training at Jerusalem Girls' College while her husband Kenneth, a shipping firm owner, worked in the Palestine Government. Drawing on 30 years in the region she aims "to supply the newcomer (often a bride coming out to live in a country whose vegetables and dishes are unknown to her but popular with her husband) something to guide her steps in the first anxious days of striving to 'feed the brute' [and] all who live in the Middle East something definite in ideas for the arranging of new and varied menus suitable to the climate" (Preface). Her recipes are arranged into soups, fish, meat, vegetable dishes with or without meat, cheese egg macaroni dishes, sauces, desserts, sandwiches, candies, jams fruits preserves and pickles, invalids' and children's dishes, and beverages. A contemporary reviewer especially appreciated her vegetable dishes with or without meat where Middle Eastern rather than Western recipes predominate: "One's mouth waters at the memory of chick peas crushed with sesame oil and lemon juice; of pine kernel sauce and of lettuce leaf scoops holding crushed wheat flavoured with parsley, mint and onion. The skill of the Eastern housewife is shown here, and these recipes should be most helpful not only to newcomers to the Middle East, but also to housewives in Britain even if present shortages necessitate modification". (References: book review, and WH Ingrams' opening remarks to Joly's lecture "The Woman of the Lebanon", both in the Journal of the Royal Central Asian Society, Vol XXXVIII, 1951).