Carob molasses, dibs al-kharroub

A Syrian pantry keeps three syrups. Pomegranate molasses carries the sour, grape molasses the sweet, and the third is carob. It is dark, almost black, and looks like cocoa without being cocoa. The tree belongs to the coastal hills, and the jar is one of the goods that travel from the coast inland. Its place at the table is settled: mixed with tahini and taken up with bread.

How it is made

The calendar starts in the second half of August. The pods are picked, dried well, broken up and stored. When autumn comes the crushed carob goes into a vessel with a perforated base and water is passed through it; the water takes up the sweetness and runs out below. The liquid is then reduced until it thickens. The work spans two seasons and is not finished in a day.

How it is eaten

Not on its own. On the plate it is mixed with tahini and taken up with bread; the mixture sits like a thick sauce and does not read as too sweet. This is the sweet of breakfast and of a winter evening. The same jar yields a second thing: a spoonful stirred into a glass of water becomes carob sharab, drunk iced in summer and hot in winter.

Why it is not cocoa

The colour and the earthy note behind it suggest cocoa, but the contents are different. Its sugar is mostly fructose rather than sucrose, in a higher proportion than in beet or cane sugar. It carries neither caffeine nor theobromine, which is why it is used in place of cocoa and why nobody minds drinking it late in the evening.

Where the tree grows

Carob is a Mediterranean tree: drought-hardy and used to a hot, humid coast. In Syria it grows along the coastal belt, between Latakia and Tartus, and in the countryside around Aleppo. The molasses is boiled in the same area, and that is where the jars on a spice merchant’s shelf come from.