Lawzīnaj (Almond-Paste Pastry Lozenges)

History

Lawzīnaj (لوزينج) takes its name from lawz, the Arabic word for almond, the confection's defining ingredient. Al-Baghdadi's 1226 recipe rolls a very thin pastry — like the dough used for sanbūsaj, and the thinner the better — around a paste of ground almonds and sugar kneaded with rosewater, then folds and cuts it into small lozenges, fries them in fresh sesame oil (shīraj), drenches them in rosewater syrup (julāb), and strews finely ground pistachio over the top. This matches the sweet's wider medieval profile: ground almonds, sugar or honey, rosewater and thin dough, often finished with pistachio. Lawzīnaj was among the most celebrated sweets of the medieval Arab-Muslim table, praised with epithets such as "supreme judge of all sweets," "stones of paradise" and "food of kings," and held so festive that "no wedding should be without it." It is frequently cited as an ancestor of the layered nut-and-syrup pastries of the baklava family, and some scholars read the drenched variant, lawzīnaj mugharraq, as an early step toward baklava. That link should be held loosely, though: Charles Perry judged that "it was not much like baklava," and the layered filo baklava proper is generally traced to later, Ottoman kitchens rather than to al-Baghdadi's lozenges.

Ingredients

• raṭl sugar
• raṭl peeled almonds
• rose water
• thin rolled bread
• sesame oil
• rose-water syrup
• pistachios

Instructions

1. Grind a raṭl of sugar and a third of a raṭl of peeled almonds fine, mix, and knead into a paste with rose water.
2. Take thin rolled bread like sanbūsaj dough (the thinner the better) and spread out a round.
3. Put the almond-sugar paste on it, fold like a strap, cut into small pieces, and arrange them.
4. Pour fresh sesame oil over as needed, then flood with rose-water syrup (jullāb) enriched with rose water.
5. Strew finely pounded pistachios on top.