A&S 50: Food item six: Carrot Jam Recipe

Carrot Jam Recipe
Redaction Julia May, aka Samia al-Kaslaania
April 2009, revised May 2011

Two Original Recipes:

Carrot Jam
It is necessary to select fresh red carrots, to wash them, clean them and cut them as thinly as possible. Put them in a ceramic pot, add a little bit of honey, and cover them with water.  Cook them until they are soft, then strain off the water with a sieve and add a quantity of skimmed honey equal to that of the carrots. Mix in seasonings chosen from among pepper, ginger, cardamom, cinnamon, cubeb, spikenard, mace, galangal, alosewood [aquilaria agallocha], saffron, and musk.  Cook it to thicken the carrot jam [jawarish]. Pour it into glass jars and consume it as needed.

Another Carrot Jam
Take some carrots, clean them, scrape them and crush them properly. Take two and a half measures of honey for every measure of carrots. Boil it for a little while and take off the fire.  Put the crushed carrots in a casserole [dast] without water; dry [them] a little bit over the fire, pour over them the filtered honey, and cook until it has thickened. Take it off the fire and season.

Kanz al-Fawai’ad fi tanwi’ al-mawa’id (“The Treasures of Useful Advice for the Composition of a Varied Table”).  13th C Egypt. Translated by M.B. DeBevoise. As it appears in Medieval Cuisine of the Islamic World by Lilia Zaouali.

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Samia's Redaction

1 lb yellow carrots (often found in the organic section of groceries)
1/3c honey (using single source honeys will produce different flavors)
9 oz honey

Use a combination of spices, equaling about 2 teaspoons:
½ t. cubebs
½ t. galangal
1 t. cinnamon (cassia)


Wash, peel, and slice the carrots. Add these to a 3 ½ qt pot with 1/3 c honey and just cover with water. Bring to a boil, cover and reduce to a simmer for 40 minutes (it stopped smelling like cooked carrots and began to smell like sweet corn). Drain (you can reserve the cooking water for stock), push through a potato ricer, and return them to the pot. Alternately, send them through a food processor before cooking. Spoon about 1/2 cup to 3/4 cup of cooked carrots at a time into a linen towel and squeeze out the excess liquid.

Add spices, 9 oz. of honey, heat to a simmer and cook down to a jam.


Serve this with hummus and pita bread.