Qurmashliyya, the Halva of Homs

Qurmashliyya belongs to Homs and carries three names: khubziyya inside the city, al-halawa al-homsiyya, the halva of Homs, outside it, and qurmashliyya on the label. Paper-thin sheets of flour, water and salt are dried, matured in sugar, fried in oil and soaked in syrup. The pink and white of it is what you recognise from across the street.

How it is made

A mixture of white flour, water and salt is poured onto a flat griddle greased with oil or ghee. It dries there in very thin sheets for two days, sometimes longer. The dried sheets then sit in sacks of sugar for 15 days, until the batch, tabkha in the trade, has matured. After that they are fried, drained, dipped in qatr syrup and stirred through. It is a long job. No stage of it takes kindly to hurry.

Why pink and white

The colour comes from food dye and it does a job. Together with the pyramid shape, it makes the sweet recognisable from a distance on the counter. The Syrian news agency, passing through Homs, wrote exactly that: the bright colours stop people walking by. The sweet itself is plain — flour, sugar, oil and syrup.

Its three names

Inside Homs it is khubziyya. Outside, the halva of Homs. Qurmashliyya is the most widely used of the three and travels best. It is also one of the few sweets of Homs with no origin dispute against Hama; on this one the sources agree.

When it is handed out

On Sweets Thursday, which falls on the same day as the Thursday of the Dead. People visiting the cemetery that day hand qurmashliyya to other visitors, and that is how the sweet came to be named after a day. It is sold year round as well, as something to offer a guest.