Navat

Navat is crystallized sugar grown into large crystals from a concentrated sugar syrup. In Uzbekistan it is also called novvot, and like Iran’s nabāt (نبات), it is enjoyed as a sweet served with tea. It comes nearly clear, pale yellow or amber, and is characterized by many crystals clustered along a string core. It forms differently from lumps made by pressing fine sugar together.

The string is not there to bind the sugar

To make it, sugar is first dissolved in water and heated into a concentrated syrup. The syrup is poured into a container strung with string and left undisturbed; sugar crystals form around the string and grow larger over time. Once they have grown sufficiently, the remaining syrup is drained off, and the string with its crystals is taken out and dried. The string is not there to join the finished confection together afterward; it is part of the process of growing the crystals.

What makes this change possible is supersaturation. Warm liquid can hold a large amount of dissolved sugar, but as the concentrated syrup cools, the amount of sugar exceeds what can remain dissolved. The excess sugar appears as a solid and is incorporated onto the surfaces of crystals already present. Making navat is not a matter of boiling syrup in a pot until it hardens. It is a matter of growing dissolved sugar back into crystals.

Uzbek technique includes examples of stretching several parallel rows of string and leaving the syrup to stand for about three days. Meanwhile, a study of crystallized-sugar production carried out in Iran includes an experiment in which crystallization took 16 hours under controlled temperature. The time varies with the concentration of the syrup, the container and how the temperature is lowered. The key to the method lies less in the three-day period itself than in avoiding stirring that would break up the crystals and maintaining the conditions for them to grow.

Grape syrup and white sugar crystals

Uzbek navat is known to be made with added grape juice, but there are also methods based on sugar and water. Describing navat as “a confection made simply by boiling down grapes” erases this difference. In methods using sugar and water, the main crystals are sucrose, also known as saccharose. The sugar composition when juice is added cannot be uniformly determined from the same experimental results. Juice and flavorings create differences in color and flavor, separately from the sugar that forms the crystals.

In Iran, nabat with saffron added is well known. Besides crystals attached to string, there is also a form in which the crystals are grown on a stick. The core on which the crystals form also affects whether the piece is easy to put into tea once taken out. Compared with parvarda, which is stretched until it turns white, navat is a confection that shows the outlines of its large crystals and their translucent color just as they are.

Tea and local sugar making

Navat is eaten by dissolving a piece in tea or by holding it in the mouth like a candy. At markets it is sold alongside dried fruit and other sugar confections, and people buy it for tea time. Tajikistan’s cultural inventory lists nabot as a confectionery craft that continues in Sughd and the Hisor Valley. It records two forms: tooth-like crystals attached to string, and lumps formed on the bottom of the pot. Where the sugar crystallizes and how it is taken out also create differences in the finished shape.

In Iran, too, nabat was a sugar product made locally, distinct from simply using imported sugar as it was. In Persia around 1890, locally made nabat was recorded alongside lump refined sugar and granulated sugar imported from Marseille and Russia. What is recorded here is not sugar manufacturing that extracts sugar from sugarcane, but the local work of processing sugar into large crystallized sugar.

The sequence of preparing the syrup and then growing crystals around the string. Process diagram created by Sweetlore. The number and size of the crystals are shown conceptually.

Glossary