Muhallabiyya

Muhallabiyya (Muhallabia, Mehalabya, مهلبية) is a pudding made by thickening sweetened milk with rice flour or starch, pouring it into dishes and chilling it. Some versions scatter pistachios or coconut over the white base; others add rose water or orange blossom water. Related forms exist in Egypt, the Levant, Turkey and elsewhere, and in Turkish it is called muhallebi.

Set with starch, not eggs or gelatin

Most modern methods use milk and sugar as the base and thicken them with rice flour or cornstarch. Some recipes (ingredient proportions and methods) use both rice flour and cornstarch, so it is not an either-or rule. Unlike custards made with eggs or sweets chilled and set with gelatin, the milk is thickened by heating starch in the pot. Rice flour adds the flavor of rice, while cornstarch brings the mixture together smoothly without the graininess of rice or rice flour.

The starch is dispersed well in cold liquid before heating. If the powder is added in lumps to warm milk, it tends to set before it can mix in evenly. The mixture is cooked while the bottom of the pot is stirred, and once it has thickened, it is transferred to dishes. While hot, it is soft enough to pour, but once cool, it is firm enough to scoop with a spoon. More starch makes it firmer, but a softness that brings out the flavor of the milk and a firmness that allows it to be turned out of a mold are different goals.

Some recipes add fresh cream, giving a richer result with more milk fat. Egyptian mehalabya also includes a form centered on the flavor of the milk, served with only a tiny amount of vanilla or a simple garnish. Versions without any floral aroma are also part of this sweet. There is also a muhallebi with cocoa by a Turkish cook, and the flavors added to the milk base vary widely.

Keeping the aroma and the topping separate

Rose water adds the fragrance of roses, and orange blossom water adds the scent of citrus blossoms. Unlike adding fruit juice, this method uses aroma rather than acidity. Other recipes choose cardamom, mastic, vanilla and so on, and the combination of aromas varies by region and by cook.

In one modern example by Tasbih, the milk layer is allowed to settle a little before a thin layer of sharbat ward, a rose syrup, is added on top. Because the topping also uses a small amount of starch, it is less likely to run into the white layer below. This works differently from mixing rose syrup into all of the milk to turn it pink. Topped with toasted pistachios, a single dish offers the soft milk layer, the thin topping and the crunch of nuts.

Older dishes with the same name included meat

Old dishes called muhallabiyya were not made only with the same ingredients as today’s white dessert. The Kitab al-Tabikh of Ibn Sayyar al-Warraq of 10th-century Baghdad records versions in which milk and rice flour are cooked together and versions with eggs added. A 13th-century cookbook of the same name by al-Baghdadi includes a form in which meat and rice are cooked and sweetened with syrup or sugar. This shows that the same name referred to a broader range of dishes than today’s milk sweet.

According to the naming legend, a Persian cook made a dish for the 7th-century military commander al-Muhallab ibn Abi Sufra, and because the general was pleased, it came to be called by a name derived from his. This is a story linking the name of the sweet to a historical figure; it does not show that the formula of today’s milk pudding was invented in the 7th century.

There was a long process of change between the old dishes containing meat and the sweets centered on milk, rice, sugar and flower water. Blancmange, which is similarly white, also once had forms that used chicken. However, shared appearance or ingredients alone are not enough to say that the world’s milk puddings came directly from a single sweet.

Muhallebi as a family of milk sweets

In Turkey, muhallebi can refer not only to white milk pudding but also to a family of related milk sweets. One of them, tavuk göğsü (tavuk göğsü), is a sweet in which finely shredded chicken breast is added to milk. Meat is found not only in old cookbooks; forms using meat fibers survive today as well.

Kazandibi (kazandibi) is a sweet finished by scorching its bottom. Some kazandibi is tavuk göğsü with a scorched bottom, while many versions today contain no chicken and are made with milk, rice flour, starch and so on. A browned, scorched surface is added to the softness of the white part. It is a related sweet that differs in its ingredients and final heating step from the typical white pudding called muhallabiyya in Arabic.

Turkish muhallebi cut from a large dish: a white milk sweet dusted with powder. Photo: E4024, 2015-05-28, location unknown. Original image / CC BY-SA 4.0. Original size; no further processing.

In large bowls or small glasses

In the household of Amina Al-Saigh, who grew up in Mosul, Iraq, her grandmothers in the 1960s washed rice grains, crushed them, dried them, pounded them and added them to milk. When welcoming guests during Ramadan, they served bowls of this sweet milk dish alongside kubbat ruz, fried rice dumplings stuffed with meat, she says. Today, Amina uses rice flour or cornstarch to shorten the work at home. Apart from the meat-containing muhallabiyya of old cookbooks, the work of preparing the ingredients has changed even within a single family.

This familiar homemade sweet also appears on the table during Ramadan and Eid. It may be shared from a large bowl or set in small individual glasses, and it is sometimes served with seasonal fruit or a sweet apricot topping. By choosing the richness of the milk, the floral aroma and the fruit topping, people make it an everyday treat or a dish for celebrations.

Muhallabiyya garnished with pistachios and roses: an individual example made with semolina. Photo: Jktab, CC BY-SA 4.0 (source). Reduced-size version; no further alterations.

Glossary