Egyptian Lenza – Egyptian milk cream cake

I have been in love with this cake for a long time. I was looking forward to sharing with you this wonderful elaboration, Egyptian Lenza – Egyptian cream cake. It’s one of those recipes that I found on Pinterest, by chance, while I was looking for a recipe that I don’t remember right now (I’m always looking for things and writing them down in my infinite notebook). As you may already know, everything that has an old-vintage look, completely captures my attention. Those cherries, those pistachios… Love, love at first sight.

When I read the recipe, saw its origin and ingredients, I was completely captivated. It took me a while to share it because I found it before Christmas. I had many recipes scheduled at that time and until now, when I had a free slot for a recipe, I could not leave it. But now it is here, ready for you to enjoy it and fall in love with it as I did.

Egyptian Lenza – Linza – Egyptian milk cream cake.

This cake known as Lenza, Linza or Egyptian Lenza originates from the Egyptian port city of Damietta. It is a pastry that combines a base and top decoration very similar to basbousaand a creamy filling, muhalabia. This cream could be defined as a milk custard or milk pudding. It has been a wonderful discovery, I really liked the taste and texture, I think it can be a great choice for many elaborations. In this case, as you can already guess, it is an ideal companion for the base of the cake.

I have not found anything about the origin of this cake. It makes me very upset when I cannot know how an elaboration was created, although it is also understandable. It is not easy to get the origin of something unless someone decided to write it down in some text, novel or book. And even less this kind of things that, possibly, were not considered very relevant at the time they were made. The bad thing is that this “fame” came late for the author.

Food historians confirm that ancient peoples made pastries. Recipes, culinary techniques, the presence of foods and presentations varied according to culture and cuisine. In the civilization’s cradles (Mediterranean region including ancient Rome, Greece, Mesopotamia, Egypt and Arabia) the main fat was olive oil. Combined with ground cereals, it gave rise to a rudimentary type of pastry. The challenge in researching these early pastries is that most of us depend on the translators of the original texts. These can vary depending on scholarly competence and cultured interpretation. In addition, there are several editions of the ancient texts and the recipe titles do not always match.

Historians agree that in the past, foods very similar to pies were made.

The first cake recipes were found in Mesopotamia, Egypt and Greece, but they were not cakes as we know them today, but rather flat breads sweetened with sugar or honey and sometimes flavored with sesame, cheese and oil. More than seven thousand years ago, the first honey cakes, sweet tarts and pieces of dough filled with dates were created and began to be prepared. It was during the Roman Empire, around the 4th century BC. when the difference between baker and pastry chef was first distinguished, introducing the trade of the ‘pastillariorum‘.

“The idea of enclosing meat inside a kind of dough made of flour and oil originated in ancient Rome, but it was the use of lard and butter in northern Europe to make a dough that could be rolled out and molded that led to the emergence of the true pie.”
An A-Z of Food & Drink, John Ayto [Oxford University Press: Oxford] 2002 (p. 254)

“If the basic concept of ‘tart’ is understood as a mixture of ingredients wrapped and cooked in dough, then proto-tarts were already being made in the classical world and tarts certainly figured in early Arabic cuisine. But these were flat tarts, since olive oil was used as fat in the dough and does not produce firm tarts; dough made with olive oil is ‘weak’ and crumbles easily.”
Oxford Companion to Food, Alan Davidson, 2ª edition, Tom Jaine editor [Oxford University Press: Oxford] 2006 (p. 603)

In the year 1440 a society called “Cooperative of confectioners” was created in which they decided to separate from the bakers and to focus on making sweet products.

Prehistoric man was already making sweet foods from maple or birch syrup, wild honey, fruits and seeds. The idea of baking a cereal paste on a stone in the sun to make pancakes is believed to have arisen in the Neolithic period. During the Middle Ages, in France, the work of bakers overlapped with that of confectioners; bakers made gingerbread, meat pies, cheese and vegetable pies.

However, it was the Crusaders who gave a decisive impetus to pastry making when they discovered sugar cane and puff pastry in the East. This led to confectioners, bakers and restaurateurs claiming the same products as their own specialties, and several disputes arose when one trade encroached on the other.

Another order, in 1440, granted pastry shops exclusive rights over meat, fish and cheese pies, the first time the word appeared. Their rights and duties were also defined and rules were established. In the 16th century, the products of the pastry shops were still very different from what we know today. Larousse Gastronomique, Jenifer Harvey Lang, editor [Crown: New York] 1988 (p. 777-8)

You may be thinking, why am I telling you all this? Well, because I believe that this type of sweet elaboration, Egypcian Lenza – Linza, is one of the first sweet elaborations that could have been carried out, only that, as it comes to us nowadays, it is evolved and improved.

Muhalabia.

Also called Muhallebi(Arabic: مهلبية, French: mouhallabié) is a popular dessert in the Middle East. It is a milk pudding usually made with rice, sugar, milk and rice flour. Although this last ingredient can be substituted by corn starch or semolina. In Greece, Turkey and Iraq the dessert is called muhallebi, the Egyptian variant is called mahalabiaand the Levantine, mahalabiyeh.

It is said that muhallebi was introduced into Arab cuisine at the end of the 7th century by a Persian cook from the then Sassanid Persia (224-651). He apparently served it to an Arab general named Al-Muhallab ibn Abi Sufra, who liked it so much that he decided to give it his name.

The oldest recipes dating from the 10th century had three versions: milk thickened with ground rice, milk with rice grains and chicken, and an egg flan without rice. The oldest recipe for muhalabia is attributed to Ibn Sayyar al-Warraq of Baghdad. Two 13th-century Arabic cookbooks, one by al-Baghdadi and the other Andalusian, present a variant of spiced pudding made with lamb instead of chicken. The Persian origin of pudding is mentioned in the Andalusian cookbook.

A 19th century English cookbook that includes a recipe for muhallebi calls it “Ramazan cakes“. The recipe consists of boiling milk with rice flour and sugar until the mixture is reduced. It is then flavored with rose or jasmine extract and allowed to cool before being sprinkled with powdered sugar.