Faloodeh

Ingredients

Syrup

• 500 mlwater
• 200 gsugar
• 4 tbsprose water
• juice of 2 limes

Noodles

• 100 grice or corn starch vermicelli

To serve

• lime wedges
• sour cherry syrup
• ground pistachio

Directions

1. Make the syrup by dissolving the sugar in the water and bringing it to the boil, then cool it completely before going further.
2. Add the rose water only once the syrup is cold. Boiled rose water loses almost all of its perfume within a minute.
3. Stir in the rose water and the lime juice, then chill the syrup thoroughly and put a metal tray into the freezer as well.
4. Cook the starch vermicelli briefly in boiling water, 2 to 3 minutes, then rinse it in ice water and drain it.
5. Cut the noodles into short lengths of about 3 cm with scissors.
6. Combine the noodles with the cold syrup in the chilled tray and put the whole thing into the freezer.
7. Stir it thoroughly with a fork every 30 minutes for about 3 hours.
8. That repeated stirring is the entire technique. Faloodeh is a granita rather than a sorbet, and it should be loose icy crystals with noodles suspended through them rather than a solid block.
9. It is ready when it is frozen but still scoopable and clearly crystalline on the fork.
10. Serve in chilled glasses with a wedge of lime to squeeze over, and a spoonful of sour cherry syrup if you have it.
11. It is a Shirazi dessert, made long before freezers existed thanks to the yakhchāl, the mountain ice houses that stored winter ice right through the summer.
12. It is the ancestor of the subcontinental falooda, which took the noodles and the rose and added milk and ice cream.

Technique

• Lime is not optional. The sharpness against the rose is exactly the balance the dessert is built on.
• Starch noodles rather than wheat vermicelli. They stay translucent and slippery when frozen, which wheat does not.
• If you have an ice cream machine, churn it briefly and then finish it in the freezer with a fork.

Substitutions

• Cornflour noodles made at home by piping a thick slurry into boiling water.
• Rice vermicelli, cut short, which is the easiest widely available option.

Variations

• Served with a scoop of Persian saffron ice cream, which is the classic pairing.
• With sour cherry syrup poured over generously.
• Made without rose water for those who find it soapy.

History

A frozen dessert of thin vermicelli-style rice noodles set in a semi-frozen sugar-and-rosewater syrup, often served with lime juice squeezed over the top and sometimes flavoured with sour cherry syrup, considered one of the oldest recorded frozen desserts in the world, with roots in Persian cooking reaching back many centuries, well before mechanical refrigeration existed, using snow and ice harvested and stored in specially constructed underground structures called yakhchals to keep the dessert properly frozen. That ancient Persian ice-storage technology, predating refrigeration by well over a thousand years, is often cited by food historians as making faloodeh and related frozen Persian desserts genuinely ancestral to a much broader global tradition of frozen sweets, including ice cream and sorbet, that developed considerably later elsewhere.

Frequently asked questions

What is Faloodeh?

Faloodeh is a dessert from Iran: shirazi frozen rice-noodle sorbet with rosewater and lime. A frozen dessert of thin vermicelli-style rice noodles set in a semi-frozen sugar-and-rosewater syrup, often served with lime juice squeezed over the top and sometimes flavoured with sour cherry syrup, considered one of the oldest recorded frozen desserts in the world, with roots in Persian cooking reaching back many centuries, well before mechanical refrigeration existed, using snow and ice harvested and stored in specially constructed underground structures called yakhchals to keep the dessert properly frozen. That ancient Persian ice-storage technology, predating refrigeration by well over a thousand years, is often cited by food historians as making faloodeh and related frozen Persian desserts genuinely ancestral to a much broader global tradition of frozen sweets, including ice cream and sorbet, that developed considerably later elsewhere.

How long does Faloodeh take to make?

Faloodeh takes 20 min plus 3 hr freezing of preparation and 10 min of cooking. The recipe makes 6 servings. It is rated medium to make.

What can I substitute in Faloodeh?

Yes, within limits. Cornflour noodles made at home by piping a thick slurry into boiling water. Rice vermicelli, cut short, which is the easiest widely available option.

What is the most important thing to get right in Faloodeh?

Combine the noodles with the cold syrup in the chilled tray and put the whole thing into the freezer.