Qatayef

Qatayef (قطايف) is a Middle Eastern sweet made by filling rounds of batter cooked on one side only with nuts, cheese, cream or similar fillings. It is popular in the Levant and Egypt, and during Ramadan in particular, shops and stalls cooking the rounds appear on street corners. The half-moon shape folded in two is the most typical, but there are also versions in which part of the opening of a small round is left open to show the cream.

The wrapper looks like a pancake, but its two sides differ. The side in contact with the griddle browns, while holes left by air bubbles remain on the top. The round is folded with the uncooked top facing inward, and the edges are pinched together to seal. Unlike sweets cooked in the same way on both sides, cooking only one side produces a wrapper that can later enclose a filling.

Cooking, Wrapping, Finishing

The batter uses wheat flour, water, yeast and other ingredients, and some recipes (ingredient proportions and methods) also add semolina or milk. When a pourable batter is dropped in rounds onto a heated griddle, bubbles open on the top surface, and eventually the surface dries. Instead of being turned over and cooked on the other side, the round is lifted off at this stage and covered with a cloth or something similar to keep it from drying out. Keeping the rounds soft until they are filled affects how the wrappers can be handled.

Nut fillings use walnuts, almonds, pistachios and the like, mixed with sugar and cinnamon. For cheese fillings, if the cheese is very salty, one method is to soak it in water to remove the salt. The filling is placed in the center of the wrapper, which is folded in half and sealed firmly at the edges. Once sealed, some are fried in oil or clarified butter and others are brushed with fat and baked in the oven, and they are finished with a sweet syrup.

For the small qatayef asafiri, a well-known style leaves the edges not fully sealed, fills the open part with cream and garnishes it with pistachios or similar. Because some versions skip reheating after the wrapper has been cooked, they cannot be explained by the same process as the common half-moon fried sweet. Here, “eaten as is” does not mean that the batter of the wrapper is raw.

Qatayef wrappers being cooked on a griddle. Holes from air bubbles have opened on the surface. Photo: أمين, 2020-05-10, location unknown. Original image / CC BY-SA 4.0. Downscaled version from the distributing source; no additional processing.

A Name in Medieval Cookbooks

One of the early texts in which the name qatayef can be found is the Kitab al-Tabikh by the 10th-century cookbook compiler Ibn Sayyar al-Warraq. Later studies of culinary culture report that 13th-century cookbooks from al-Andalus and the Maghreb also describe a method using fermented batter and milk, cooked in a glazed earthenware pan with round hollows. Even with tools different from today’s flat metal griddles, there was a process aimed at producing thin rounds of uniform size.

Sweetness Hidden Inside, as Described in Poetry

Qatayef also appears in medieval Arabic poetry. Ibn Unayn, a Damascene poet who lived from the 12th into the 13th century, wrote a poem in which kunafa addresses qatayef, telling it that kunafa’s own sweetness is visible on the outside, whereas qatayef’s charms are folded away. The difference in the sweets’ structures becomes a play on words competing over which is superior. In poetry too, qatayef, whose filling cannot be seen from the outside, was a sweet that hid its sweetness inside.

During Ramadan in 1511, the Cairene historian Ibn Iyas lamented in verse that sweets had become expensive because of rising sugar prices, and appealed to the market inspector to lower the prices. Qatayef and kunafa are named side by side there as well. The concrete images that appear in these cookbooks and poems show that thin wrappers with sweet fillings were tied to people’s tables and pleasures.

The “Chataiff” entry preserved in a manuscript of the German translation of the Liber de ferculis (first half of the 15th century, Bavarian State Library, Cgm 415, f.4r). This is not a photograph of the present-day sweet but a textual source showing that the sweet’s name also reached European culinary literature. Original image / Manuscript bibliography / Public Domain.

Words and Court Legends Surrounding the Name

Daniel Newman, a researcher of Arabic culinary history, explains qatayef as the plural of qatifa (qaṭīfa, قطيفة), a word that meant a covering laid over the body when sleeping. This reading likens a sweet that covers its contents with a thin wrapper to a cloth covering. In Egypt, on the other hand, there is also a theory that the soft texture was compared to velvet cloth, as well as a story linking the name to guests “picking” the sweets one after another.

According to a legend presented by a cultural magazine under Egypt’s Ministry of Culture, the Umayyad caliph Sulayman ibn Abd al-Malik ate this sweet during Ramadan in AH 98 and liked it very much. In another version, cooks at the Fatimid court competed in skill, and when one of them beautifully arranged small sweets filled with nuts, they were so popular that guests vied with one another to take them, and the name is said to have come from this act of picking. Both are origin stories handed down to later generations, not contemporary records proving invention at a particular court. They can be read as legends that tie the softness, the wrapped shape and the pleasure of taking them by hand to words and dynastic stories.

Qatayef filled with cheese. The wrapper is folded around the filling. Photo: أمين, 2020-05-10, Salfit, Palestine. Original image / CC BY-SA 4.0. Downscaled version from the distributing source; no additional processing.

A Seasonal Sweet Finished at Home

During Ramadan, there is a custom of buying only the cooked wrappers at a shop, taking them home and filling them with one’s preferred filling. The process is shared between the artisans who cook wrapper after wrapper on the griddle and the people who prepare the filling at home. In a 2019 interview with a confectioner in Al-Bireh, Palestine, too, the round wrappers made in the shop were being bought so that they could be filled with nuts or cheese at home and then fried or baked.

Yoshiko, who lives in Jordan, writes of learning from her mother-in-law and of her memories of making the sweet from the batter with the women of the household to entertain guests who came during Ramadan. In her household, qishta, made from cream, is often used as the filling, and store-bought products are also used.

A Japanese person who lived in Jordan bought wrappers cooked at a shop, wrapped them around a date paste that had been recommended, and fried them. When invited to another household, this person reportedly ate large wrappers filled with cheese, baked in the oven and cut into pieces. On yet another day, a version filled with coconut and baked was served in a Christian household. The shop’s wrappers become a starting point that each household finishes with different fillings and in different sizes.

Even the same sweet varies in filling and finish. In Syria there is a version called shirat, which is left flat and topped with nuts, cinnamon, syrup and so on, and today there are also versions made with chocolate and other ingredients. Fixing qatayef to a single filling would obscure these differences, which develop while sharing the same wrapper.

Glossary