Lazaqiyat

A loose batter of flour, milk and tahini — about the consistency of qatayef batter — is poured onto a hot griddle. The thin breads that come off it are stacked while still hot, with sheep samne and honey or sugar going between every layer. It has to be eaten hot: the fat melts between the layers and glues the breads to one another.

One sweet, two names, one line across the country

The same recipe travels Syria under two names, and the border between them is geographic:

• Golan, Suwayda and Daraa — lazaqiyat
• Hasakah, Homs, Hama, Aleppo and Latakia — siyalat

Two names, two reasons

Each comes from a step of the recipe. Siyalat refers to the batter running onto the griddle; lazaqiyat to the layers sticking to one another through the samne. One region named the sweet for what it saw being made, the other for what happens when it is eaten.

In the older kitchen books

The same recipe appears in classical Arab sources under the name furniyya. Neither of the modern names is recent either; dialect dictionaries and collections of folk sayings record both.

Where to eat it

In the south — Suwayda, Daraa and the villages of Hawran — at home, and in winter. It is not restaurant food; because it needs a griddle and has to be served hot, it is made in a kitchen or a village bakery. If it reaches a table in front of you, eat it before it cools.