> ... its dots be cheese ... its vowels mint ... If like me you're wondering about "dots" and "vowels", my best guess is that it's an allusion to arabic script

> ... its dots be cheese ... its vowels mint ... If like me you're wondering about "dots" and "vowels", my best guess is that it's an allusion to arabic script. Some letters have dots above or below them, and short vowels are sometimes represented by a slash or loop above or below the preceding consonant. So the recipe is using a metaphor to effectively say "sprinkle with cheese". See e.g. https://arabic.fi/lessons/vowels https://arabic.fi/lessons/vowels The dinar/dirham for egg yolk/white is interesting as well. I think it's another metaphor rather than a direct translation. Those word are both used in the currencies of various countries around the Mediterranean - dinar (yolk) was originally a gold coin whereas dirham (white) was silver. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dinar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dinar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dirham https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dirham