Those who attended 30 Year or Cudgel may remember some remarkably tasty snow being served. Yda van Boulogne provides the recipe for this dessert.

Ingredients:

  • shaved ice
  • sekanjabin syrup of your choice

Put shaved ice in bowl. Top with syrup. Enjoy!

Mint Sekanjabin:

Ingredients (by volume):

  • 1.5 cup sugar (or honey if you want to be more accurate)
  • 1 cup water
  • 0.5 cup apple cider vinegar (~ to taste)
  • a good helping of mint

Bring water to boil, add sugar and stir till dissolved. Keep at rolling boil point for 10 minutes and then take it of the fire.

Add cider vinegar (technically to taste, IIRC 1/2 cup was a good amount). Add mint & let steep for a few hours, ideally 1-2 days in the fridge.

Serve over shaved ice, or mixed with water, or dip some lettuce in it.

Pomegranate Sekanjabin:

Ingredients:
(you’re on your own for quantities, I kinda invented this one on site)

  • sugar (less sugar than in above recipe as the molasses are sweet by themselves)
  • water
  • pomegranate molasses (check your local turkish shop)
  • cider vinegar

Bring water to boil, add sugar & molasses. Keep at boiling point for about10 minutes and add the molasses. Add cider vinegar to taste.

Serve like above, but maybe not try the lettuce.

Recipes for Sekanjabin can be found in the Andalusian cookbook, and more references can be found in Arab sources. I’m not aware of an explicit recipe for mint Sekanjabin in period but it is a popular version in modern day Iran.

Syrup of Simple Sikanjabîn
Andalusian p. A-74
Take a ratl of strong vinegar and mix it with two ratls of sugar, and cook all this until it takes the form of a syrup. Drink an ûqiya of this with three of hot water when fasting: it is beneficial for fevers of jaundice, and calms jaundice and cuts the thirst, since sikanjabîn syrup is beneficial in phlegmatic fevers: make it with six ûqiyas of sour vinegar for a ratl of honey and it is admirable.

The Pomegranate Sekanjabin occurs in a similar recipe in the Andalusian cookbook:

Syrup of Pomegranates
Andalusian p. A-74
Take a ratl of sour pomegranates and another of sweet pomegranates, and add their juice to two ratls of sugar, cook all this until it takes the consistency of syrup, and keep until needed. Its benefits: it is useful for fevers, and cuts the thirst, it benefits bilious fevers and lightens the body gently.

(Actual recipe texts copied from Cariadoc’s Miscellany)

The syrups where used to flavour sharbat, sweet snow, in the medieval arab world. Ice would be gotten from mountains and/or kept in ice houses. Ice houses in Iran are assumed to go back to at least 400BCE.