Masghati

Masghati (مسقطی) is an Iranian sweet made by heating and stirring starch, sugar and water together and scenting the mixture with rose water. The almost translucent body contains pistachios or almonds, and versions made with saffron are tinted yellow. Besides being cut into diamonds and arranged, it also comes in a soft form poured into small dishes and eaten with a spoon. The same name is used both for a confection cut into pieces and for a dessert eaten with a spoon.

Starch, not flour, to carry the aroma

The base is not wheat flour itself but starch taken from wheat or corn. Heated with water, it becomes thick and supports the shape after cooling. Its handling of ingredients differs from the start from halva, in which wheat flour is toasted in oil. Rather than bringing a toasted-flour aroma to the fore, it makes a body in which the scents of rose water, cardamom and saffron come through.

The starch is first mixed evenly into cold water and then put over the heat. Sprinkling the powder directly into a hot pan tends to form lumps that have set only on the outside. The firmness differs between the thickening at the start of stirring and the state reached once it has been cooked down enough to be cut into pieces. The mixture is heated in the pan until the moisture has reduced and the spatula leaves a trail, then transferred to a dish, cooled thoroughly and cut. Depending on how far it is cooked down, it can be adjusted from a softness suited to serving in a dish to an elasticity firm enough to lift a single piece.

One method from Lar first boils sugar and water into a syrup, combines part of it with the starch, and then gradually adds the remaining syrup and fat while stirring.

Fat may also be added, but there are methods using vegetable oil and methods using butter, and no single formula is fixed. Whether almonds are mixed into the body or pistachios are scattered on as a finish also changes how the cut surface and top look. Recipes (the proportions of ingredients and the method) that add rose water near the end of heating give a floral scent as a finishing touch.

Masghati from Larestan. Small pieces garnished with nuts and flowers. Photo: طاها, 2018-01-08, purchased in Shiraz, Iran; location of photo unknown. Original image / CC BY-SA 4.0. Reduced version from the distributor, no additional processing.

The sweet of Lar, and a gift from Shiraz

In Fars Province, Larestan, centered on Lar, and Shiraz are known for masghati. Because masghati made in Lar is also sold in shops in Shiraz, the town where it is bought is not necessarily the town where it was made. In Shiraz, there is a custom of setting out masghati on the same tray as a baked sweet called koloocheh and eating them as a pair, even on individual plates. It is a combination that pairs a soft starch sweet with baked pastry. It is also popular as a sweet for Nowruz celebrations and as a gift. Regional tendencies in firmness and sweetness are often described, but in practice how far it is cooked down and the amounts of fat and nuts vary from maker to maker.

The name is sometimes explained as linked to Muscat in Oman. The family of Haj Mahdi Qannad, a confectioner in Lar, hands down a story that his grandfather, Haj Mohammad, learned the method on a pilgrimage journey in the early 1300s of the Iranian calendar, around the 1920s in the solar (Gregorian) calendar. On the way from Lar via Bandar Lengeh and Muscat to Mecca, the grandfather fell ill and stayed in Muscat; after recovering, he is said to have exchanged confectionery techniques with local craftsmen and, on returning home, to have added cardamom and saffron. It is a family tradition that links travel across the sea with the refinement of the aroma in Lar. It is a story of how this family’s method was passed down, not a record establishing that masghati as a whole was invented in the 1920s.

Masghati cut into pieces on a plate. The translucent yellow body and the pieces cut with sharp corners are visible. Photo: Fortress7, source, CC BY-SA 4.0. Unaltered.

Glossary