Category: Sweets

For those dreary days, when one sweet just isn’t enough to get you through, here are two delicious biscuits from 13th-century Muslim Spain. And even if you don’t have an oven, that is no excuse for not making them since they don’t require baking. But, as with most things in life, there is a trade-off in that they require a bit more elbow grease! The first recipe is for hadīdāt (حديدات), which can be translated as ‘the iron ones’, from the Arabic word for ‘iron’, hadīd (حديد), for reasons that will soon become apparent. The basic ingredients are toasted flour, skimmed honey (i.e. honey from which the scum has been removed after heating), and oil (walnut works particularly well). The mixture is kneaded into a stiff dough, together with pepper, as well as other spices, and shaped into biscuits. As a result of the added pepper, they will look like pieces of iron, hence their name. Brace yourself, though, since that peppery sweetness has quite a kick!

The second recipe is for biscuits called fālūdhaj (فالوذج), which, rather confusingly, share their name with what is usually a starch pudding — a linguistic problem that one should carefully ponder when savouring them. These biscuits are also made with honey, but this time, starch is added, as well as ground almonds and, of course, saffron. The mixture is shaped into mini-loaves, which should look like little gold ingots.

The most time- and labour-consuming part of the process is the careful shaping of each biscuit, which gives the wrists and forearms a pretty good work-out! However, rest assured, the effort you put in is rewarded once you taste the biscuits. Of course, the only accompaniment worth having with them is some freshly brewed mint tea!

This is a recipe for a starch pudding (similar in texture to a flummery), known as fālūdhaj (فالوذج), which is Persian in origin. First, you need to make some almond milk by crushing (sweet) almonds, adding water and straining the liquid through a fine-meshed sieve, ‘until it becomes like milk.’ In terms of fruit, you can use the juice of pomegranate, apples, pears, gourd, or quince. After bringing the juice to a boil over a gentle fire, add starch until you obtain the required consistency. The 13th-century anonymous author must have been quite partial to this dish since he called it wondrous (عجيب, ‘ajīb)!

Recipes for this delicious sweet are found in 13th-century Syrian and 14th-century Egyptian cookery books. They are called ‘mulberries’ (tūt, توت) in reference to their shape. The instructions could not be easier; after rolling the dough over a sieve to get the right texture, it is shaped into mulberry-type pieces which are then fried in sesame oil before being dipped in rose-water syrup. Serve with a dusting of sugar. They are an excellent accompaniment to mint tea! There is a direct modern descendant of this delicacy in the form of the Lebanese ma’kroon (معكرون), which in other countries are also known by the more poetical name of ‘Zeineb’s fingers’ (أصابع زينب). They are a very popular treat during Ramadan.

This recipe from 10th-century Baghdad is called lu’lu’ī (لؤلؤي), ‘the pearly one’, as the sesame seeds appear to be like pearls. It is made by boiling honey and then adding hulled sesame seeds. Once it has formed into one mass, spread it out on a greased board or surface and when it has cooled down, you can break it into pieces of your liking.

This medieval Egyptian biscuit is so delicious that it was considered an appropriate gift for visiting grandees. It requires flour, pistachios, sugar, and both chicken fat and sheep’s tail fat, but in the absence of the latter, the re-creation (from The Sultan’s Feast) used only the former. Another interesting twist is that the fat, which is kneaded into the dough, should be rubbed with mastic, cinnamon, musk, and camphor, added with a drizzle of lime juice. Once the dough is finished, make biscuit shapes and bake in the oven until golden. The addition of a pine nut on top just tied it all together!

Two mediaeval Egyptian recipes from The Sultan’s Feast for sweets made from gourd, one resembling candy strings, and the other a pudding. The recipes simply call for ‘green sweet gourd’, and were recreated using the more unusual snake gourd. In both cases, the gourd pieces are boiled. The candied strings are made with sugar, honey and rose-water syrup, and garnished with crushed pistachios. The second dish has the consistency of the carrot khabis, and requires poppyseed essence, almond milk, sugar, starch, rose-water syrup, and sesame oil. If you are a purist or mediaevalist, then you should also flavour the sugar with musk.

A delicious quince preserve recipe from 13th-century Andalusia. The Arabic word ma’jūn is related to a verb meaning ‘to knead’, and denotes a paste, usually for medicinal use, though the result is often so tasty that one does not need to be sick to enjoy it! The preparation could not be simpler and requires about a pound of quince and sugar. According to the author, the jelly can be used to remove bitterness in the mouth, arouse the appetite, but also prevents bad vapours (بخارات, bukhārāt) from rising from the stomach to the brain. You can’t say fairer than that, can you!

A delicious 10th-century Iraqi dish of carrots and milk, cooked with spikenard, cloves, cassia, ginger, and nutmeg. For those who want to take things up a notch, there is a similar dish, which adds dates (تَمْر, tamr) and ground walnuts. When the mixture has thickened, it is removed from the fire and left to settle. If you think that the resulting dish looks somehow familiar, you’d be right. Except for the absence of cardamom, it bears an uncanny resemblance to the classic Indian desert known as gajar (ka) halwa. Though appearing in an Arabic treatise, the dish was probably born in Persia. Either way, this may well be the oldest recorded recipe of gajar halwa.

A 13th-century Egyptian recipe for a sweet rose drink, made by boiling sugar syrup with rose petals, preferably fresh, but you can also use dried petals and soak them in water overnight. The result is a brightly coloured delicacy that is a perfect accompaniment for a special day!