Shekarbureh (. Azeri şəkərbura) is a sweet

pastry Pastry is baked food made with a dough of flour, water and shortening (solid fats, including butter or lard) that may be savoury or sweetened. Sweetened pastries are often described as '' bakers' confectionery''. The word "pastries" sugges ...

, dating back to at least the

Sassanid The Sasanian () or Sassanid Empire, officially known as the Empire of Iranians (, ) and also referred to by historians as the Neo-Persian Empire, was the last Iranian empire before the early Muslim conquests of the 7th-8th centuries AD. Named ...

era. Originally, it was like a halva made from sugar and almonds. Its alternate names in Persian include ''Shekarborak'', ''Shekarbora'', ''Shekarpareh'' and ''Shekarpirah''. In its different variations, the dessert is also common in Azerbaijan, Iran, and Turkey.

Versions

In Anatolia this pastry is called Şekerpare in Turkish and is one of the popular desserts in the

Turkish cuisine Turkish cuisine () is the cuisine of Turkey and the Turkish diaspora. It is largely the heritage of Ottoman cuisine, which can be described as a fusion and refinement of Mediterranean, Balkan, Middle Eastern, Central Asian and Eastern Eur ...

. Mainly prepared by baking some soft balls of almond based pastry dipped in thick lemon-flavored sugar syrup, şekerpare is pronounced “''sheh-kehr-PAH-rih''” in Turkish. Şəkərbura Novruz şirniyyatı

In the Republic of Azerbaijan it is called ''şəkərbura'' and is used as a dessert. It is a sweet pastry in half-moon shape, filled with ground almonds,

hazelnuts The hazelnut is the fruit of the hazel tree and therefore includes any of the nuts deriving from species of the genus ''Corylus'', especially the nuts of the species ''Corylus avellana''. They are also known as cobnuts or filberts according ...

, or

walnuts A walnut is the edible seed of a drupe of any tree of the genus ''Juglans'' (family Juglandaceae), particularly the Persian or English walnut, ''Juglans regia''. Although culinarily considered a "nut" and used as such, it is not a true bot ...

, and sugar. Shekerbura, '' shorgoghal'', and ''

pakhlava Baklava (, or ; ota, باقلوا ) is a layered pastry dessert made of filo pastry, filled with chopped nuts, and sweetened with syrup or honey. It was one of the most popular sweet pastries of Ottoman cuisine. The pre- Ottoman origin of th ...

'' are the iconic foods of Novruz holiday in

Azerbaijan Azerbaijan (, ; az, Azərbaycan ), officially the Republic of Azerbaijan, , also sometimes officially called the Azerbaijan Republic is a transcontinental country located at the boundary of Eastern Europe and Western Asia. It is a part of t ...

. In Azerbaijan, it usually involves teamwork of relatives, friends and neighbors who congregate at someone's home to make this

Nowruz Nowruz ( fa, نوروز, ; ), zh, 诺鲁孜节, ug, نەۋروز, ka, ნოვრუზ, ku, Newroz, he, נורוז, kk, Наурыз, ky, Нооруз, mn, Наурыз, ur, نوروز, tg, Наврӯз, tr, Nevruz, tk, Nowruz, ...

delight. Like other pastries prepared for

, shekerbura also has a symbolic meaning which denotes the half-moon or flame of fire.

Name and meaning

The name for this crescent-shaped pastry comes from Persian ''shekar bureh'' شکربوره. ''Shekar'' means sugar in Persian and ''Bureh'' is a word that goes back to the

Middle Persian Middle Persian or Pahlavi, also known by its endonym Pārsīk or Pārsīg () in its later form, is a Western Middle Iranian language which became the literary language of the Sasanian Empire. For some time after the Sasanian collapse, Middle ...

*Bōrak. This word ultimately goes back to the

Proto-Indo-European Proto-Indo-European (PIE) is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European language family. Its proposed features have been derived by linguistic reconstruction from documented Indo-European languages. No direct record of Proto-Indo- ...

roo
*bher-
which meant "to carve, cut, split,". Turkic languages have borrowed this word from Persian. The name of another pastry, Borak (

Börek Börek or burek are a family of pastries or pies found in the Balkans, Middle East and Central Asia. The pastry is made of a thin flaky dough such as filo with a variety of fillings, such as meat, cheese, spinach or potatoes. Boreks are mainly ...

) is also borrowed from the same

Persian Persian may refer to: * People and things from Iran, historically called ''Persia'' in the English language ** Persians, the majority ethnic group in Iran, not to be conflated with the Iranic peoples ** Persian language, an Iranian language of the ...

word.

Preparation

The dough is made of wheat flour, butter, milk, egg yolks, cream, and yeast. The filling is prepared from peeled almond or fried nuts mixed with sugar powder. It also includes

cardamom Cardamom (), sometimes cardamon or cardamum, is a spice made from the seeds of several plants in the genera ''Elettaria'' and ''Amomum'' in the family Zingiberaceae. Both genera are native to the Indian subcontinent and Indonesia. They are r ...

to flavor the pastry. The dough is rolled and cut into small round shapes, then filled with stuffing and closed up by making a pattern of stitches. The stitching pattern on the dough is produced using traditional tweezers called .

References

{{Cuisine of Azerbaijan Iranian desserts Turkish desserts Azerbaijani desserts Nut dishes

Versions

Name and meaning

Preparation

See also

References