Dissolve sugar with corn syrup, salt and water in a pan, stirring from time to time.

1 1/2 cups of toasted nuts (almonds, walnuts, pistachios, pecans).

INGREDIENTS: Makes 30 to 60 balls (depending on size) Recipe adapted from Delights from the Garden of Eden.

Nawal Nasrallah says that even in Iraq it is made as a candy nowadays and no longer from that heavenly sap. One confectioner to whom I talked, from the firm Oussama Ghrawi told me that to make these candies with the real mann is not profitable, therefore it is made without it!Īpparently making taffy-like (or nougat-like) candy was popular in the Arab world since the tenth century. It is still made in Iraq but only gets exported sporadically into Lebanon. The real mann al-sama to my knowledge is no longer available (at least not in Lebanon). Today, confectioners in Lebanon make it like a taffy, stuffed with almonds and flavored with cardamom.

The candies we would get were carefully tucked in a cardboard box, wrapped in paper and tied with a burlap string feverish hands would open the box releasing clouds of flour and the strong scent of cardamom in the box, soft balls of taupe-colored marshmallow-like candy nudged side-by-side. This sap falls off the tree, covering leaves on the ground it is then scraped off the leaves, cleaned, boiled, and milled flavored with cardamom, stuffed with nuts, and shaped into large chewy balls: Mann al-sama. There are certain varieties of trees in Northern Iraq which give out sap after being punctured by insects. Here is the scoop on these heavenly candies, provided by Nawal Nasrallah in her Delights from the Garden of Eden.Īpparently, historians attribute it to the same manna mentioned in the Bible and in the Qoran as food that God sent the people of Israel during their wanderings in the desert.

Pour some sugar on may mene