Basbousa

🥚 Vegetarian

Basbousa is a semolina cake soaked in sugar syrup, popular across the Middle East, North Africa, the Caucasus and the Balkans. Baked in a sheet, it is usually cut into diamonds or squares and is a familiar sweet in Egypt and much of the eastern Mediterranean.

History

The Oxford Companion to Food suggests that basbousa may have developed from ma'mounia, a dish from the Abbasid period, around the 9th century, made by cooking rice in fat and syrup. Over time semolina replaced the rice, and the batter was baked before being soaked in syrup. Some food historians think semolina syrup cakes may also descend from toasted semolina sweets such as suji halva, which were common in Middle Eastern desserts.

Another account places its first preparation in the Ottoman Empire, probably in what is now Turkey. An 1844 Ottoman Turkish cookbook, the Melceü't-Tabbâhîn, includes a revani made with semolina, butter, sugar and eggs, baked, soaked in syrup and cut into baklava shapes. From Anatolia and the Balkans the cake spread through Greece, Bulgaria and Albania, while basbousa became established in the Arab world.

The name changes from place to place. It is called harisa in the Levant, nammoura in Lebanon and revani in Turkey, a term probably borrowed from Persian. Variations are many, with coconut, orange flower water, citrus, pistachio, cream, dates or, in Kuwaiti pastusha, pistachio and orange blossom.

Culture

In Egypt basbousa is an everyday sweet and a festive one, often served during Ramadan, both at the suhoor and at iftar. Each piece is usually topped with a toasted almond or walnut, and its grainy texture and strong sweetness make it a simple and easily recognised dessert.

Regional versions reflect the diversity of the area. In the Levant there are versions filled with qishta, a thick clotted milk cream, and in Palestine cooks flavour it with fennel, nigella or fenugreek seeds. In Greece the town of Veria is known for its traditional revani. Sephardic Jewish communities make tishpishti, and in Algeria kalb el louz is prepared with almond flour.

Today the dessert remains common in bakeries, pastry shops and homes across the region, and among its diaspora communities.

Legend and fact

Several popular accounts are doubtful. The name basbousa is said by some to come from a colloquial Arabic phrase meaning 'just a kiss', and revani is sometimes linked to Revan, the Turkish name for Yerevan, supposedly to commemorate an Ottoman conquest. These explanations are folk etymologies and are not documented facts.

Trivia

Names across the Levant. In the Levant it is called harīse, and in Lebanon nammūra. The name changes by region, although the sweet is essentially the same.

A Libyan date version. In Libya there is a variant with a layer of date paste between two layers of basbousa.