Meet Sharbat, the Ancestor of Sorbet, Syrup, Shrub, Sherbet, and Pretty Much Everything Else Cool

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This is a vinegar syrup, this sugar, water, and cooked, and then vinegar added.

I'm gonna put some water in it,

some ice.

Actually, plenty of rice.

Add some

cucumber, grated cucumber.

Then

I'm going to add some fresh mint.

That, my friends, is pure audio refreshment.

Otherwise known as the sound of the grandam of Iranian cooking in the US, making a classic icy Persian treat.

It's called Sharbat.

You may not have heard of Sharbat.

I hadn't.

But you probably have heard of some of its descendants.

Sorbet, syrup, sherbet, even juleps.

In this episode, we get to the bottom of the Sharbat glass.

What is Sharbat?

How did it inspire all these delicious frozen European treats?

And how did Iranians manage to make this granddaddy of all cool deliciousness thousands of years before the invention of the refrigerator?

This episode is a bonus episode.

It's a special partnership with the company McCormick.

For their flavor forecasts, they talk to McCormick experts around the world, chefs, culinary professionals, trend trackers, and food technologists.

They find the trends and ingredients that are hot, and they share them with people like you who are interested in culinary innovation around the world.

To find out more, you can follow Flavor Forecast on Instagram or check out their website at flavorforecast.com.

The McCormick Flavor Forecast is a trend piece that we've been working on for 20 years, and I've actually been fortunate enough to work on it since the inception in 2000.

This is Chef Kevin Better.

He's the culinary director at McCormick, and we called him up to find out what the flavor forecast is.

This quarter's trend is going to be around the theme of keeping cool.

Of course, cool makes sense for most of you listening in the northern hemisphere.

It's summer, and even the thought of switching my oven on makes me break out in a sweat.

People are looking for relief from the heat.

We want to showcase ways globally that people are doing that.

So we're collaborating with our culinary teams across the world from Australia and China and Southeast Southeast Asia and Mexico.

So it really gives us this incredible global perspective on food and flavors.

Here in America, we might think about ice cream when we think about cooling.

I mean, I basically think about ice cream all the time.

But in different countries and different cultures, there are plenty of other frozen treats.

Halo halo in the Philippines, which is a shaved ice, which might have some ube ice cream and some palm nuts and mung beans.

Then there's coffee in India, which has this really just rich, intense decadence to it, which is dynamite.

And then the flavors that you might find would be pistachio or cardamom.

There's a beverage called a mango chas in India, this combination of buttermilk, cucumbers, chili, cumin, ginger, mint, and lemon.

And it's almost a bit more on the savory side, but still served chilled.

So many cooling treats, so little time.

But this episode, we're focusing on just one of them, Sharbat.

You know, I'm actually a fairly newbie to Sharbat.

I mean, we really got interested in it as we started looking at this trend for the McCormick flavor forecast.

Sharbat is basically

the simple syrup plus lime juice, vinegar.

Najmia Bhat Mangalij is an Iranian American chef and author.

My Iranian American friends say her cookbooks are basically the ultimate authority on Persian cooking.

And Sharbat is Persian.

It comes from what we now call Iran.

And pretty much all of our favorite Iranian American cooks wanted to talk to us about it.

First, we visited with Najmia, then we called Naz the Ravian.

It can be sweetened either with sugar or honey or various molasses.

And then it's mixed with something tangy to cut through the sweetness.

So that can be lemon juice, lime juice, vinegar, tamarind, sour cherries.

Naz is the author of one of the newest Persian cookbooks.

It's called Bottom of the Pot.

She has a few recipes for Sharbat in her book.

And it can also be infused with floral waters like rose water of course or orange blossom water and then you dilute it all with water and there you have shabat.

It's the thing that's brought out on a tray in tall glasses when people come over in the afternoon or when they come over for dinner before the sun has set.

But it's something that everybody has at home.

So we would have it when we'd go to other people's houses.

And my mom has a very, very acidic palette.

And I loved how tangy it was.

And I was always disappointed at other people's houses because theirs was much sweeter.

Yeah.

And yes, that last voice is the lovely Sameen Nosrat, author of Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat and star of the Netflix series of the same name.

Same was born in the US, but Najmeya lived in Iran until she was 18.

And she told us her earliest memories of Sharbat involve sour cherries and her extended family.

They were washing sour cherry in wooden baskets.

In our household was just like a big kitchen and they were washing sour cherry all day.

They're making sour cherry jam, sour cherry syrup, which was sharbat al-balu.

And then me and my other three sisters, we all enjoy ourselves.

We made

earrings with sour cherries, we made a lipstick with char sour cherry, and we drank a lot of sharbat, sour cherry sharbat.

Same's favorite version of sharbat is called sakanja bean.

It's made with honey or sugar syrup, vinegar, and perhaps some mint.

One of my favorite, favorite, favorite things, like the yummiest version of sakenja bean there is, is to grate cucumbers into the drink.

So like as you're drinking, you get these like cold, sort of like crunchy little bits of cucumber mixed with the sakenja bean, the like vinegary sweet thing.

I do remember one time I I loved Sakenja bean.

I've always loved it so much.

And I remember one time I had like, maybe it was a Nalgene water bottle or some water bottle of Sharabat that I took to school.

It must have been elementary school.

And I took it to school and my mom would often put like a leaf or a little sprig of fresh mint in there to sort of perfume it.

This was the 80s and fresh mint was something of a foreign concept to many Southern California kids, especially the idea of fresh mint in water.

And so people were like, I remember, I specifically remember them saying like, ew, what's in your drink?

Like, is it a frog?

It's so slimy.

It's so gross.

And I got really upset.

That was just about one of the only times I ever got upset from kids making fun of, you know, my food being different.

And I came home and I,

you know, I like complained to my mom and I was really upset.

And she was like, yeah, but they don't get to drink succanjabine.

So

nothing to be upset about.

Parental logic at its finest.

And Iranians have been drinking sakanjabin or other forms of Sharbat for around 1500 years, maybe more.

But Sharbat didn't get really popular until the Muslim conquest of Persia in the 600s.

Before that, Persians had a different favorite drink.

Because, you know, Iranians were wine drinkers and winemakers.

And then when Arab came to Iran with the advent of Islam,

wine became forbidden.

So, but the Iranians try to come up with something else.

At first they tried to change the word for it and they started calling it, so what we call wine today is Sharab, which is the Arabic word for drinking to drink or sweet drink.

So they thought they could get away with it if they just changed the word for wine to this.

Sharab.

Well, that didn't work.

So then they eventually had to find a way to replace their wine with an equally satisfying drinks.

So that's why Sharbat was born.

And so then as eagerly as ancient Persians had sipped wine, the next generations just as eagerly embraced Sharbat because they had a secret ingredient for their Sharbat, ice.

Well, they made this dome-shaped well on the edge of each town because that was caravan stops.

throughout Silk Road.

So people come and they had crushed ice.

I bet you had some sharbat.

Remember, this is hundreds and hundreds of years ago, so refrigeration as we know it, it hadn't been invented yet.

It wouldn't be invented for nearly another 2,000 years.

So where was this ice coming from?

Well, there are mountains in Iran, and it does snow there, so some of this ice was brought down from the freezing cold mountains, but some of it they made in a Yaqchal.

Yachchal, chal means well.

Yach means ice.

This is well of ice.

It's an ancient structure and system that's used to produce, harvest, and store ice from the colder months for use in the warmer months.

Oliver Wilton is a British architect and he studied Yahtal to see how they worked.

The most well-known ones are on the Iranian plateau, which is a hot, dry area in Iran.

And we looked at a particular ice house in Maybord, Yad.

The Akhtal Oliver and his colleagues studied is a huge pit covered with a dome made out of earthen bricks.

The pit is about 15 feet deep, like the diving end of a pool.

The dome is as high as a four-storey building.

It's big.

And the ice in this case, there aren't any snowy mountains nearby, so the ice in this case was produced in a special ice pond which was part of the overall complex.

So this ice pond is filled with water from a quanart which is an underground canal.

In the evening it's filled with a shallow amount of water.

At night in the desert the temperature drops significantly.

So from December through March it would get cold enough to freeze this shallow pond into ice.

And then in the morning people come and shovel that ice into the ice house.

The whole thing is a very nifty design.

There's the underground canal system which was collecting precious water and funneling it into the pond.

There's also a shelter wall as a part of the complex and that just shades the ice pond from early morning sun so that the shovelers can have a lion basically.

And that also helps to cool the ice pond area in the evening so that it gets colder at night.

And the materials used to build the Achdal are critical too.

So it's a very elegant process where you're just reconfiguring a lot of earth on site, basically, to make this amazing ice-making and storing machine.

And that also suits the function of the store because the earth is a reasonable insulator, so the ice stored there doesn't melt too quickly, so it's still there in summer.

And some accounts indicate that the whole ice store itself was actually covered in straw.

So it may have looked a bit more like a great big sort of haystack, basically.

These yachts were in use up to the 1960s.

Najmir remembers getting ice from them as a kid.

But they're not working anymore, so to figure out how much ice they would make and how long they could keep it cool, Oliver and his colleagues created a mathematical model.

The layer of ice that formed in the Yakchal pond at night wasn't super thick, but these are huge structures.

And according to Oliver's calculation, the Yachtchal they studied made nearly 1800 cubic feet of ice each year.

That's hard to picture, but it's basically more than 3 million ice cubes.

Enough for plenty of glasses of Sharbat, in other words.

As long as not too much of it melted when the sun came up.

So based on these quite rudimentary simulation methods,

we started off by assuming that they would place half a meter of straw insulation over the ice pack.

And the indication there was that you'd get about 20% of that ice melting away over the period of the year.

So there should still be plenty for use in summer for cool drinks and ice desserts and things.

Today, a lot of architects and designers are trying to figure out how to build buildings that don't use as much energy to heat and to cool.

And Oliver says these Yakchals are an inspiration.

We as sort of current architects interested in low-NG architecture, we've actually been learning a lot ourselves by looking at historic Iranian architecture.

Because they are almost a sort of a diagram to do something which might seem to be a sort of magical country act, which is to make ice in the desert.

Oliver has actually borrowed some of the most efficient aspects of Yaqchals to design energy-efficient office buildings for the UK.

But it's not just that these Yakchals keep things cool really well.

That's great, but other cultures had ice houses that far back too.

But the way you can make ice and store it in the same building in the desert, that's unique to the Yakchal.

In the past, these crushed ice Shabat would have been something truly special.

Now, I would have imagined that this would be something of a prestigious thing to partake of.

It would have been quite costly to build and maintain these structures and also to procure a load of people to shovel ice into the ice house.

But it probably would have been worth the cost if you were a trader.

Persia was right in the heart of the Silk Road.

For thousands of years, wealthy merchants would travel in their caravans for weeks and months from the Far East to the Middle East.

They'd be sweaty and dusty.

They were riding their camels, and then suddenly they came across these huge earthen domes.

And they would be served these wonderful, refreshing drinks.

Today, like we said, a Sharbat is a drink with ice cubes.

But the way that Nas describes these original Sharbats, they were more like a snow cone than a drink.

So originally, Sharbat was consumed, you know, you drank it or you had it over ice or snow.

That's the origins of Sharbat.

And then Arabs moved on from Iran and conquered the Iberian Peninsula, which is now Spain, and also regions of France, Switzerland, and Italy.

This was from about the year 700 through 1000.

And then they took with them all the goodies from Iranians, because Iranians were foodies.

And so they took all these these techniques, foods, ingredients with themselves to Italy.

So we know that and so sharbat is one of them.

Sharbat became

sorbet, sorbeto and sorbo, sorbet in French.

When it got to England, sharbat became sherbet and the sweet tart cordial it was made from, which Arabs call sharab, that turned into the word syrup.

And we know that there is a link to juleps.

So the drink julep or a mint julep, it stems from sharbat.

Hundreds of years ago, back in England, long before the Kentucky Derby even existed, a julep was a tall drink served over crushed ice, usually with mint.

And it often had rose water, like a sharbat.

Rose water in Farsi is goleb, which the Arabs pronounced julep.

Sharbat also became shrub, which is having a bit of a resurgence these days.

Shrubs are drinking vinegars, fruit, sugar, and vinegar, which you dilute with water.

Kind of like Sameen's favorite sharbat, Sharbat, it's a kanja bean.

Which is very surprising, have a very surprising and distinctive taste.

You know, you make basic syrup and you add a cup of vinegar.

If you haven't had it before, it takes you by surprise in a really great way.

It gets all the senses going.

Persians, we love tangi, so I think that's what it is.

Over the centuries, Iranians developed lots of different flavors of Sharbat.

Najmia remembers all sorts of varieties.

Queens Sharbat,

I remember my mother cooked the queens and squeeze out the juice and then made it beautiful Sharbat.

You know, they make so many different kinds of Sharbat.

They use basil seeds.

They soak basil seeds overnight and then mix it with sekanjamin.

That's totally different Sharbat.

And we have barberry Sharbat.

Barberry juice, oh, it's lovely in Khorasan, northeast of Iran, which all the barbecue grows there.

Oh, it looks like cranberry.

These are some of the most traditional flavors.

And traditionally, Sharbat is served at happy occasions.

Actually, Sharbat is associated with festivities.

And

if someone arrives to your house, you offer them Sharbat.

It's sort of a kind thing.

Picnics and the heat, engagement parties, any celebration?

Yes, it's associated with wedding.

Shar you serve in Sharbat wedding?

You don't serve Sharbat in funeral.

You serve coffee in funeral.

But Samine was born in America, and as much as she loves Persian traditions and traditional flavors, she's open to experimenting.

Here, there's just so many herbs growing in the garden.

I feel like I could make a lemon verbena sharbat.

That would be super tasty.

There's also so many different kinds of melons.

It might be nice to have a melony one, you know, like instead of grating cucumber, you could grate a little bit of melon melon or watermelon into.

Oh, wait, you know what?

I think we did have once in a while a watermelon sharbat.

My mom might have made that one too.

Kevin Vedder of McCormick, they're the sponsor of the special bonus episode.

He and his colleagues have also been playing with new Sharbotte recipes.

I feel like that's something that's really important when you're

bringing a food or a cuisine forward is to keep that authenticity and that tradition, but then to put those twists on it, layering in multiple flavors, or we're working on a Sharbot that's got a little bit of ghee into it.

So that adds some, you know, another textural element to it and another mouthfeel, which I think will be really exciting.

Ghee is an ingredient you mostly find in India, not Iran.

It's clarified butter.

Basically, you melt butter and take out all the milk solids.

Having a fat in a frozen drink is a little bit odd, particularly when you're using things like juices.

But when you think of typical things like gelato or ice cream, those certainly have a good fat.

So we're just putting enough in there to, you know, when we blend it up, just to give a little bit of mouthfeel and a little bit of texture, and a little bit of smoothness.

I think it really rounds out the flavors.

That sounds delicious.

And so did Sameene's other ideas once she got going, like a super tart passion fruit sharbat.

The wonderful thing about passion fruit that is like so addictive and like enticing to me is the fact that it comes with these amazing little seeds that you get to chew on.

So the beautiful thing about making a passion fruit sharbat, even though it'd be completely untraditional, is that you would still get that experience of drinking and chewing at the same time.

We should say here that Same has never made any of these wild new Sharbattes, but she has just planted a passion fruit vine, and we think we've inspired her to try.

So when she comes out with a Sharbat book, frankly, we'd like a cut.

I think even though I've never seen a Chia Sharbat, like that could be kind of a fun play on a traditional thing.

Plus it would be kind of this beautiful, as like a Southern Californian native, it would be a beautiful way to honor both like my Iranian heritage and my proximity to Mexico and my love of Mexican food to make some sort of like, you know, cucumbery, chia-y,

like herb-y, maybe cilantro-y sharbat or something.

I like the idea of chia seeds, but those of you who listen to Gastropod regularly will know that I am not a fan of cilantro.

That one's for you, Nikki.

You're lucky.

Kevin had another fun sharbat recipe he created after some experimentation.

You know, one of the ones that we've worked on that I found to have been really interesting and just both from a flavor perspective and just a flavor combination.

We did one with toasted coriander, lemon, and ginger, and we added just a touch of carbonation to it.

And it was really just that carbonation opened up just the flavors of the coriander and the lemon.

At this point, you might well be thinking, I need to get out my blender and start getting creative with my icy refreshments.

which is something Kevin would highly encourage.

In fact, he suggests experimenting with more than just Charbotte.

There are any number of great refreshing treats you can create.

I would say I have no hesitation.

I feel like that anyone that wants to get on this trend, there's no holds barred.

I really feel like you can make some incredible, you know, from a beverage to a popsicle to we did a frozen Thai lime pie that was absolutely dynamite.

Because Sharbat is great, but you know, sometimes you want a frozen Thai lime pie or an ice cream.

Sharbat is 100% great, but it is not ice cream.

No, no, absolutely not.

Under no circumstances is Sharbat a replacement for ice cream.

So, important update, Cynthia.

I can and will continue eating ice cream to stay cool, but I'm thinking I'm gonna add Sharbat to the mix this summer.

This special episode is brought to you by McCormick and their Flavor Forecast, which right now is Refresh, Replenish, Rehydrate.

You can find out more by following Flavor Forecast on Instagram and even score some recipes on their website at flavorforecast.com.

A huge thanks this episode to Najmia Batmangalich.

Her most recent book came out last year, and it's called Cooking in Iran, Regional Recipes and Kitchen Secrets.

But really, you can't go wrong with any of her books and recipes and her Sharbat is freaking delicious.

Nasdar Avian published a book last year called Bottom of the Pot.

It is also fantastic.

And of course, we are just the hugest fans of Sameen Nusrat.

She wrote an amazing book called Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat, and you can watch her on Netflix in the series of the same name.

And finally, thanks to architect Oliver Wilton of the Bartlett School of Architecture in London, his work on interseasonal buffering is immensely thrilling to a refrigeration nerd like me.

We'll be back in just one week with our regular episodes, our first of the new season, all about what some people think of as a miracle cure.

And when you Google all the things that are going wrong with you in middle-aged, your joints hurt, blood pressure's going up, losing your memory, every time, and you Google solutions for this, you know, what comes up again and again are omega-3 supplements.

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