Mastic

Flavour and aroma

piney, cedar, slightly bitter, fresh. Slightly bitter, piney and fresh.

Heat

No heat

Forms

whole, powder

How to use it

• grind · Dry grinding technique

  Freeze the tears for 10–15 minutes, then pound in a mortar with a pinch of sugar (for sweets) or salt (for savoury dishes); it gums up if warm or ground alone. Use very little: 2–4 small tears per 500 g flour or 1 litre milk.

• infuse · Simmering technique

  For poached chicken or stock, add 1–2 tears with cardamom pods to the water.

• Tsoureki and Easter breads
• Stretchy Turkish and Levantine ice creams (dondurma, booza)
• Milk puddings such as muhallebi
• A tear or two in the water when boiling chicken (Levantine and Egyptian practice)
• Liqueurs and sweets

Identifying good quality

Small, hard, translucent tears, pale yellow to ivory; larger, clearer tears are higher grade. They shatter when bitten and then turn chewy. Darker, sticky pieces are older.

• Not to be confused with Almond gum (badam pisin): Almond gum and gum arabic are water-soluble gums, not aromatic resins.

Origin and history

Origin: The island of Chios, Greece (Pistacia lentiscus var. chia).. Grown and used: Produced almost entirely in southern Chios; used in Greek, Turkish, Cypriot, Levantine and Egyptian sweets and cooking..

Mastic has been harvested on Chios since antiquity; under Genoese and Ottoman rule it was a valuable controlled trade. 'Masticha Chiou' has EU protected designation of origin. It flavours tsoureki, milk puddings, the stretchy ice creams of Turkey and Syria (dondurma, booza), and in Arab kitchens a tear is often added to water when boiling chicken.

Well documented