Arab cuisine in the context of "Arab Culture"

Sicilian cuisine is the style of cooking on the island of Sicily. It shows traces of all cultures that have existed on the island of Sicily over the last two millennia. Although its cuisine has much in common with Italian cuisine, Sicilian food also has Greek, Spanish, Jewish, Maghrebi, and Arab influences.

The Sicilian cook Mithaecus, born during 5th century BC, is credited with having brought knowledge of Sicilian gastronomy to Greece: his cookbook was the first in Greek, therefore he was the earliest cookbook author in any language whose name is known.

Arab culture is the culture of the Arabs, from the Atlantic Ocean in the west to the Arabian Sea in the east, in a region of the Middle East and North Africa known as the Arab world. The various religions the Arabs have adopted throughout their history and the various empires and kingdoms that have ruled and took lead of the civilization have contributed to the ethnogenesis and formation of modern Arab culture. Language, literature, gastronomy, art, architecture, music, spirituality, philosophy and mysticism are all part of the cultural heritage of the Arabs.

The countries of the Arab world, from Morocco to Iraq, share a common culture, traditions, language and history that give the region a distinct identity and distinguish it from other parts of the Muslim world. The Arab world is sometimes divided into separate regions depending on different cultures, dialects and traditions, such as the Arabian Peninsula (Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Yemen and the United Arab Emirates), Egypt, the Levant (Lebanon, Syria, Palestine and Jordan), the Maghreb (Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco and Mauritania), Mesopotamia (Iraq), and Sudan.

Garum is a fermented fish sauce that was used as a condiment in the cuisines of Phoenicia, ancient Greece, Rome, Carthage and later Byzantium. Liquamen is a similar preparation, and at times they were synonymous. Although garum enjoyed its greatest popularity in the Western Mediterranean and the Roman world, it was in earlier use by the Greeks. The taste of garum is thought to be comparable to that of today's Asian fish sauces.

Like modern fermented fish sauce and soy sauce, garum was a rich source of umami flavoring due to the presence of glutamates. It was used along with murri in medieval Byzantine and Arab cuisine to give a savory flavor to dishes. Murri may derive from garum.

Murrī or almorí (in Andalusia) was a liquid condiment made using a fermented solid-state starter called budhaj that was made with barley flour or wheat flour, known from Maghrebi and Arab cuisines. Almost every substantial dish in medieval Arab cuisine used murrī in small quantities. It could be used as a substitute for salt or sumac, and has been compared to soy sauce by Rudolf Grewe, Charles Perry, and others due to its high glutamates content and resultant umami flavor.