Khushkanānj (Almond-and-Sugar Filled Pastry)

History

Khushkanānj (خشكنانج) is a filled baked pastry whose name is Persian — khushk, "dry," compounded with nān, "bread" — pointing to a firm, dry biscuit rather than a moist cake. Al-Baghdadi's 1226 recipe works fine semolina flour with sesame oil into a stiff dough, leaves it to rest until it ferments, then shapes oblong cases filled with ground almonds and fine sugar kneaded with perfumed rosewater — the almonds set at half the weight of the sugar — before closing and baking them in the oven. The confection was not his invention: the earlier 10th-century Kitāb al-Ṭabīkh of Ibn Sayyār al-Warrāq already records khushkanānaj, and food historian Nawal Nasrallah notes that such nut- or date-stuffed cookies were the most prevalent medieval Arab type, linking them backward to the ancient Mesopotamian qullupu and forward to the modern kleicha and maʿmūl. Al-Warrāq's version was portable enough to be carried by the elite on the hajj. A plainer, almond-less variant, khushkanānaj gharīb ("exotic cookie"), is generally held to stand among the ancestors of the ghurayba/qurabiya shortbread family, while kleicha's own lineage is likewise traced to Mesopotamian qullupu. Al-Baghdadi is thus a late witness within a long, Persian-named Iraqi baking tradition, not its origin.

Ingredients

• raṭl fine semolina flour
• ūqiyya (per raṭl flour) sesame oil
• almonds
• fine sugar
• rosewater

Instructions

1. Take top-quality fine semolina flour (samīdh) and add three ūqiyya of sesame oil (shīraj) per raṭl of flour.
2. Knead firmly and leave the dough until it ferments.
3. Roll into oblong discs; place in the center of each a filling of almonds (lawz) and fine sugar kneaded with perfumed rosewater — the almond being half the weight of the sugar.
4. Gather and close each pastry as usual, bake in the oven, and remove.