Holidays: The Sweet Season
Sugar Plays a Big Role in Middle Eastern Desserts
Sugar was first Cultivated in the Middle East and Figures highly in its Cuisines. Holiday Goodies, Like Paklava, Lokma, and Marzipans are "Musts" for Holiday Entertaining
As the holiday season approaches, it’s not a bad idea to note the importance of sweets on the Middle Eastern table. One of the hallmarks of Middle Eastern sweets is the often cloyingly sweet use of simple syrup (sugar and water) in the finished product. Usually, the syrup is poured into the dessert, when it is hot from the oven…think of paklava, farina cake or lokom, for example. Sometimes, honey is used – especially in Jewish, Greek and Syrian dishes – but Turkish, Persian and Armenian cooking usually calls for sugar.
History of Sugar Cultivation
From a “Food History” point of view the custom is not surprising, as sugar itself probably originated in the Tigris Euphrates Valley in what is modern day Iraq and in the Indus Valley of India. Alexander the Great recorded that he found something he called a “honey-bearing reed” during one of his expeditions down the Indus River in 325 B.C. Dioscorides, a Greek physician who lived during the reign of the Roman Emperor Nero wrote about a “hard honey called saccharum “ that he described as being “ grainy, like salt and brittle between the teeth, but of sweet taste…”
As early as the year 1,000 A.D. we also know that sugar was being grown in Spain – the Moors had brought it with it with them and spread its use throughout much of Europe. Two centuries later, the Venetians began to import it from the Tigris-Euphrates Valley, Syria and Egypt, as part of their trade on the Silk Road.
The high price of sugar for the European table was one of the main reasons, early settlers to the New World began to experiment with cultivating it in the Caribbean. Columbus, in fact, planted the cuttings in Santo Domingo during his second voyage. It was also grown successfully in North Africa and in parts of France and Italy.
But, if was incredible expensive in Europe for centuries (in the 1700s, a pound of it in London sold for the equivalent of $2.75), it was the sweetener of choice in much of the Middle East.
Middle Eastern Dessert Classics
What do they do with it – beyond paklava, farina cake and lokom? They stir it into a wide variety of muhallebi (Milk puddings, in Turkish), create fried yeast-doughspecialties, like lokma (also dipped into simple syrup just after frying), create helvas, halvas and marzipans and candy everything from chestnuts to fruits.
Typically, these over the top sweeties are not served after long dinners as desserts, however, they are usually served in very small quantities as the perfect accompaniment to an afternoon of Turkish coffee and conversation – or as the last course of a meze display.
