PERSIAN SWEETS
In a Persian town there is a curious arrangement of the shops. All the
shops where one kind of article is sold are generally grouped together
in one street or _bāzār_. To buy shoes we go to the shoe bazaar, for
cooking pots to the copper bazaar.
The copper or brass bazaar is almost always worth a visit in a Persian
town. It is a long roofed-in street with a continuous row of small
shops on either side. The “shop” consists of a lock-up room with a
small mud platform in front of it, raised a foot or two above the
street. On this platform are two or three stumps on which the pots are
placed for hammering, for after being heated over a charcoal brazier
they are hammered and beaten into the required shape, thickness and
pattern. On nearly every platform is a man, sometimes two or three men
and boys, hammering each on his copper pot and the noise produced by a
hundred or more men hammering vigorously on copper vessels, which give
different notes according to size, shape and thickness, is deafening,
but not wholly disagreeable.[B]
But there is another bazaar well worth a visit in Yezd at any rate. The
shops here have counters rising in tiers, so as to display the very
tempting goods to advantage. The goods themselves are chiefly laid
out on huge round copper trays, about a yard across and very heavy,
made in the bazaar we have just left, but whitened over, as all copper
vessels are.
Surely we are in Fairyland at last. Shop after shop shows tier upon
tier of the most delicious sweets in the most tempting profusion.
Here is _pashmak_, looking like cotton wool and tasting something
like butter creams. There are two or three kinds of almond toffee, or
_sōn_--some with green pistachio nuts in it. Huge fondants, or _lōz_,
in diamond-shaped cakes, nearly as large as the ordinary penny fancy
cakes in England, alternate with similar cakes of green _pari-tā’ūs_
(peacock’s feathers), and brown _bāghalavā_, richer and stickier than
either.
Those white _nuqls_ are delicious burnt almonds, which seem to melt
away in your mouth, the long ones have strips of cocoa-nut instead of
almonds, and the little round ones burnt peas. Here are little flat
round cakes of _gaz_, a kind of nougat only made in Isfahan, but sent
to all the towns in Persia. One variety of _gaz_ contains little sticks
of a gum which is supposed to cure rheumatism, a very pleasant remedy.
There is a great bowl a foot across, and over an inch thick made wholly
of sugar candy, which has taken the shape of the basin in which it
crystallised, and in the middle of which three long sticks of sugar
candy stand up high above the top. Such a bowl a kind Persian friend
sent to a missionary’s little boy, when he was a few days old, to
provide him with “sugar-candy water,” which is considered particularly
good for young babies. These are only a few of the sweets, there are
too many to mention all. Some kinds are only made in the fast month
of Ramazān, and others only at the New Year. The sweets are delicious
but they are as a rule very simple and very sweet. So the Persians do
not hand them round in little paper bags, nor even in pretty little
boxes; they pile them on plates and dishes, as we do cakes; and, as you
have seen, many of them are as large as cakes. When you go to visit a
Persian, you have not tea and cakes, but tea and sweets. For a quiet
call on quiet people, two or three plates of sweets are enough, but at
a regular sweet-eating at a big house, one or two great trays will be
set on the ground before the guests, each with five dishes of sweets on
it, each dish holding about a pound and a half to two pounds of sweets.
The Persian women are often very pressing with their sweets, even to
the point of putting them into their visitors’ mouths, and in their
hospitality they sometimes over-estimate the size of the mouth. Often
too, the guests are made to carry home what is left, or a part of it,
tied up in a handkerchief. This is so common that where the European
is shy of pressing the custom, the Persian ladies will sometimes carry
home the remains of European dishes out of courtesy, to show that they
have appreciated them. This custom probably exists and has existed in
many Eastern countries, and may very likely be the reason why Joseph
gave Benjamin five times as much as his other brothers. Benjamin was
probably intended to take what was over away with him.
I was visiting some Persian women one day, and they asked for my
handkerchief to wrap up the remainder of the sweets in. I apologised
for being unable to take them as I had not a clean handkerchief, on
which they all eagerly assured me that it did not matter in the least,
they would be quite content with the one I had. The Persian _dastmāl_
or handkerchief serves every purpose except the one we connect it
with. Your Persian servant, always carries a large coloured one in his
pocket. He dusts the rooms with it, puts his purchases from the _bāzār_
into it, polishes your boots with it before you enter a Persian house,
and carries home sweets or nuts in it.
At the New Year, there are twenty-one days set apart for holiday
making and visiting, and in every house tea and sweets and sherbet are
ready for all comers. In those twenty-one days people are expected
to visit all their friends, and even with strict moderation the most
sweet-loving schoolboy of your acquaintance would probably be glad of a
rest by the end of the three weeks.
All this sounds delightful, doesn’t it? But unfortunately it is more
for the grown-ups than for the children. The children like sweets well
enough and get a good many, but they have not the same opportunities as
the grown-ups.
But sweets have their serious uses among the Persians. We have seen
that rheumatism may be cured with nougat, and we find that sweets
in general are very strengthening. It is not at all uncommon, after
a small operation or the extraction of a tooth, to see the friends
pressing sugar or sweets into the patient’s mouth, to restore her
strength after the shock, and in the same way after a fright a few
sweets make you feel much better.
Bread and sweets are not an uncommon dinner, and a child who was
ordered by the doctor to take plenty of milk because it was good
strengthening food, was given three-quarters of a pound of sweets for
her dinner instead. “So much more strengthening than milk,” the mother
said.
Persian sweets are very soft and in the dry climate quickly get hard
and lose their first freshness, and to offer a Persian stale sweets is
like offering you stale cakes. They are at their best only on the day
they are made, and the servant sent to buy sweets will sit down with
his tray of plates at the shop-door and wait till the new sweets are
ready, when they can be put quite fresh and new on the plates on which
they are to be served. In Yezd, where the best sweets are made, our
servants seemed to regard the moving of sweets to a fresh plate much
as we should the removal of a pie to a fresh pie-dish, and many sorts
are certainly the worse for being shifted after they have got cold. All
better-class Persians make their own sweets at home and consider “shop
sweets” very inferior.
The fame of Persian sherbet has spread far, and nearly every visitor to
Persia looks forward to a treat when he tastes it. But it by no means
comes up to expectation. It is often made fresh in the presence of the
guests, so the recipe is no secret. A sugar loaf is put in a basin,
by preference a pot pourri bowl, and cold water is poured over it,
and it is allowed to melt with an occasional stir. A little rosewater
is then added to flavour it, and it is handed round in glasses,
with ice if possible. At meals, however, the bowl is placed on the
tablecloth,--there is no table,--and a large carved wooden spoon is
passed to each in turn from which to drink it.
Sometimes lime or orange juice is offered as an alternative flavour to
rosewater, which makes it much more palatable to Europeans. But insipid
as the ordinary sherbet is, it seems the most delicious compound
imaginable when it is taken, well-iced, after a long walk with the
thermometer at 100° in the shade. Perhaps that is why it has been so
much praised.
Another favourite beverage is _sekunjibin_, which is like raspberry
vinegar with mint instead of raspberry.
Sherbet and good things to eat figure largely in Muhammad’s description
of the joys of Heaven. His ideals were ideals that did not need much
growing up to. He expected his followers to have childish ideas and
childish desires even in heaven.