Parvarda

Parvarda is a flour-dusted pulled candy eaten in Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. It is best known in a small, pillow-like shape with rounded corners, but almond-shaped and spherical pieces also exist. At its heart is a boiled-down sugar syrup, which is cooled, pulled and stretched, and finished with a dusting of wheat flour.

Boil, cool, stretch

Sugar and water are boiled together, and lemon juice or citric acid is added. Once enough water has been cooked off, the syrup is still hot and runny, so it is transferred to an oiled vessel or similar and cooled until it can be handled by hand. Among home recipes (the proportions of ingredients and the method), there is also a method in which the syrup is put into a greased bowl, which is then set in another container filled with cold water so that it cools from the outside.

The cooled candy is worked on flour, stretched and folded back on itself again and again. In a Tajik confectionery book published in 1969, the rope of candy is pulled through the air as if stretching noodles, and the work continues until it turns a white, silk-like color. Finally, it is shaped into thin rods and cut into short pieces. Before pulling, the syrup is clear, but after repeated stretching it turns white inside as well. In this method, a large mass of candy is stretched until thin and then cut into short lengths.

Wheat flour is not a main dough ingredient dissolved into the syrup in large quantities from the start. In some methods, it is dusted onto the candy during stretching and sprinkled on again after cutting. In the recipe from the same book, the flour-dusted candy is covered with a white cloth and left for two or three days before the excess flour is shaken off. Another home method involves making the candy at night and removing the flour the next morning. The flour keeps the candy from sticking to the work surface or to neighboring pieces and gives it a surface that is easy to handle.

Pulling candy by hand or by machine

Besides pulling by hand, production in Uzbekistan also includes methods that use candy-pulling machines. In both cases, the sequence is the same: concentrate the syrup, stretch it, then cut it. Because boiling time and cooling and resting times vary with the quantity in the pot and the equipment, no single figure can be treated as a rule for the confection as a whole.

Shapes and flavorings also vary. The Tajik confectionery book includes kulcha parvarda, which has ground ginger added and is shaped like figs. Today there are also versions flavored with vanilla and versions that are colored. While the confection keeps its name, its flavor and appearance have changed. Even with these changes, it remains popular as a sweet for tea alongside nuts and dried fruit, found both in the sweets sections of markets and on the tea table at home.

At Chorsu Bazaar in Tashkent, too, parvarda is sold in the confectionery section. Under the large blue dome, stalls are divided by type of food, and near the raisins, dried apricots and nuts, it is sold together with navat, pashmak, halva and other sweets. The small white pieces of candy are also a market sweet chosen along with dried fruit and nuts.

A candy spanning two countries

In materials on Tajikistan’s traditional culture, parvarda is recorded in connection with the names ordak and pechak as well. Because records of names referring to the same confection overlap with records of variant forms, the method cannot be pinned down to a single one on the basis of the name alone. The technique of artisans pulling and shaping candy has been passed down not only in Uzbekistan but also in neighboring regions, with differences in tools and shaping methods.

In addition, a Turkish-language linguistic study records this name as one of the sweets that entered Crimean Tatar food culture from Uzbek cuisine. The study deals with how Crimean Tatars sent to Uzbekistan in the forced deportation of 1944 adopted local words and food culture and carried them on after their return. The small white candy has two sides: a homemade sweet for tea and an artisan’s pulled candy.

Parvarda cut into small pieces (January 13, 2019). The flour-coated surface and cut faces are visible. Photo: Oleg Efremov (Veshciy), Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0. Saved at reduced size. No content alterations or cropping.

Glossary