Sesame seed candy
 | |
| Type | Confectionery |
|---|---|
| Main ingredients | Sesame seeds, sugar or honey |
 Cookbook: Sesame seed candy  Media: Sesame seed candy | |
- Sesame candy may also refer to sesame halva.
Sesame seed candy is a confection of sesame seeds and sugar or honey pressed into a bar or ball. It is popular from the Middle East through South Asia to East Asia. The texture may vary from chewy to crisp. It may also be called sesame (seed) candy/bar/crunch; sesame seed cake may refer to the confection or to a leavened cake or cookie incorporating sesame.
In Greece and Cyprus, sesame seed candy is called pasteli and is generally a flat, oblong bar made with honey and often including nuts. Though the modern name παστέλι pasteli is of Italian origin,[1] very similar foods are documented in Ancient Greek cuisine: the Cretan koptoplakous (κοπτοπλακοῦς) or gastris (γάστρις) was a layer of ground nuts sandwiched between two layers of sesame crushed with honey.[2] Herodotus also mentions "sweet cakes of sesame and honey", but with no detail.[3]
Various kinds of sesame candy are found in Indian cuisine. The Assamese tilor laru is an Assamese breakfast snack. The Maharashtran tilgul ladoo is a ball of sesame and sugar flavored with peanuts and cardamom and associated with the festival of Makar Sankranti. Sesame Candy or Rewri is also widely eaten in Pakistan. The Chakwal city of Pakistan is very famous for this product. Many people around Pakistan request their fellows to bring it as it is not widely available in any other part of Pakistan.
Sesame candy is also traditional to northern Iran (Mazandaran province) and is called Peshtezik in Mazandarani and Persian. Peshtezik is usually a thin flat layer of sesame seed with sugar or honey and often includes nuts (specially Walnuts). Peshtezik is served in special Persian holidays such as Nowruz and Yalda.
In Israel, date honey sometimes replaces honey.
See also
Notes
- ↑ G. Babiniotis, Λεξικό της Νέας Ελληνικής Γλώσσας: "παστέλι."
- ↑ Deipnosophists 14:647, discussed by Charles Perry, "The Taste for Layered Bread among the Nomadic Turks and the Central Asian Origins of Baklava", in A Taste of Thyme: Culinary Cultures of the Middle East (ed. Sami Zubaida, Richard Tapper), 1994. ISBN 1-86064-603-4. p. 88.
- ↑ Herodotus, Histories 3:48; also in Hist. 3.44: "ἴτρια, τραγήμαθ᾽ ἧκε, πυραμοῦς, ἄμης."
