Qaṭāʾif (Filled and Fried Pancake Sweets)

History

Qaṭāʾif — small yeasted pancakes cooked on one side to a bubbled surface, then filled, folded and soaked in syrup — is among the most anciently documented of Arab sweets. Its earliest attestation is the tenth-century Kitāb al-Ṭabīkh of Ibn Sayyār al-Warrāq (a separate, earlier work from al-Baghdadi's), which even preserves a recipe for qaṭāʾif said to have been made for the Abbasid caliph Hārūn al-Rashīd (r. 786–809). The name derives from the Arabic root q-ṭ-f, "to pluck or pick up". Al-Baghdadi's 1226 version sets out three kinds — filled (maḥshuwwa), fried (maqluwwa) and plain (sādhija) — stuffed with pounded almonds and sugar and moistened with sesame oil (shīraj), rosewater syrup (julāb) and ground pistachio. The sweet also travelled westward, appearing in the thirteenth-century Latin Liber de ferculis as cataif. Some trace its beginnings instead to the Fatimids, but the documented record runs back to the Abbasid era, and medieval diners prized it enough that poems were written in its praise. Its enduring life is the striking part: qaṭāʾif remains one of the most iconic sweets of the Arab world, above all as a Ramadan specialty eaten after iftar and sold seasonally in bakeries from Egypt to the Levant.

Ingredients

• pancake batter/dough
• almonds
• fine sugar
• sesame oil
• julep syrup
• rosewater
• pistachios

Instructions

1. Stuffed (maḥshuwwa): bake oblong, fill with almonds and finely pounded sugar, fold and arrange, then drizzle with sesame oil (shīraj), julep syrup (jullāb), rosewater, and finely pounded pistachios.
2. Fried (maqluwwa): bake as discs, fill with almonds and finely pounded sugar kneaded with rosewater, fold and fry in sesame oil, then lift out and dip in julep syrup.
3. Plain (sādhija): set in a dish and drench with sesame oil, then julep syrup, rosewater, and finely pounded pistachios.