Experimenting with mastic
Our corner stores have a habit of stocking some truly weird things, everything from occasional instant tonkatsu ramen bowls to bags of whole hazelnuts. This is how Seth came home one day with a box of authentic mastic-flavoured lokum from Turkey. We were both excited because mastic is a trade good from the era of frankincense and myrrh. I actually thought mastic was one of the tree resins used as incense, but it turns out while its hardened form can be used as incense, it has more commonly been used as a flavouring since ancient times. Specifically mastic helps stabilises meringue and nougat like gum arabic. (Note: Frankincense, myrrh and mastic are still prized trade goods for religious ritual and traditional medicine.) All these ancient products are harvested in hot, arid regions such as the Arabian peninsula and African desert. So it's kind of amazing when you consider how they formed the backbone of global trade since Greek and Egyptian antiquity.
Which brings us to the most obvious question: What does a flavour of the ancient world taste like? Definitely...an acquired taste. It's very strongly pine, with brief ginger and floral hits on the tongue. The aftertaste lingers. Imagine a cross between menthol and camphor as flavours rather than scents. Incidentally, looking up camphor tells me it is also considered a food flavouring in some parts of the world. I'm not going to ask how ancient Arabs thought mothball-flavoured food was a good idea anymore than sugared chicken mousse is logical to modern taste buds. The wiki page for camphor lists an apocryphal mention of a Tang dynasty dessert made of flour, camphor and water buffalo milk. I'm calling this apocryphal since my older Chinese relatives are lactose-intolerant and people of my parents' generation had to develop a tolerance for lactose over time. (This is how people of my parents' generation are now able to enjoy such things as cheese.) Outside of maybe a strange royal dish made simply because its ingredients are rare or a one-off traditional medical treatment (with rare and unusual materials used for their peculiarity), I'm not seeing it happen in ancient China as a recipe coughed up by Han Chinese.
Mastic gum's traditional use is as a chewed breath freshener. This makes sense with its strong pine profile. I have tested a piece of the mastic lokum after a heavy meal and while it could be an utter placebo effect, I thought it seemed to stop my breath smell like unagi sauce. The lokum is unfortunately not something we can eat like a pile of cookies. I mean, it's probably a good thing we're not compelled to eat a starch and sugar candy like a pile of cookies (nor should we eat a pile of cookies), but it's like liquorice. You have to had grown up with the flavour to crave it.
My first thought when I tasted the lokum was that this might be a good substitute for candied ginger in ginger cookies. So off I went and made ginger cookies with chopped mastic lokum sprinkled into the dough. The strong flavours of ginger cookies did work really well. On the rare occasions I could taste it within the cookie, it complemented the heavily gingered dough. I always throw in an extra tablespoonful of ginger into anything that claims to be a ginger cookie because I don't make wimpy-ass ginger cookies. The mastic lokum could by extension also be chopped into gingerbreads and spiced or fruit cakes. I was a little worried the starch gel would melt and leak if baked, but though I think the lokum pieces shrunk somewhat, they didn't melt all over the place. I did think after baking I would probably double the amount of chopped lokum from about ⅓ cup to 2 ¼ of flour in a recipe. Once we're finally through this batch of ginger cookies, I might try making some sort of loaf cake with the lokum. Chocolate beer cake seems like a good match, as does something like cinnamon apple.
Which brings us to the most obvious question: What does a flavour of the ancient world taste like? Definitely...an acquired taste. It's very strongly pine, with brief ginger and floral hits on the tongue. The aftertaste lingers. Imagine a cross between menthol and camphor as flavours rather than scents. Incidentally, looking up camphor tells me it is also considered a food flavouring in some parts of the world. I'm not going to ask how ancient Arabs thought mothball-flavoured food was a good idea anymore than sugared chicken mousse is logical to modern taste buds. The wiki page for camphor lists an apocryphal mention of a Tang dynasty dessert made of flour, camphor and water buffalo milk. I'm calling this apocryphal since my older Chinese relatives are lactose-intolerant and people of my parents' generation had to develop a tolerance for lactose over time. (This is how people of my parents' generation are now able to enjoy such things as cheese.) Outside of maybe a strange royal dish made simply because its ingredients are rare or a one-off traditional medical treatment (with rare and unusual materials used for their peculiarity), I'm not seeing it happen in ancient China as a recipe coughed up by Han Chinese.
Mastic gum's traditional use is as a chewed breath freshener. This makes sense with its strong pine profile. I have tested a piece of the mastic lokum after a heavy meal and while it could be an utter placebo effect, I thought it seemed to stop my breath smell like unagi sauce. The lokum is unfortunately not something we can eat like a pile of cookies. I mean, it's probably a good thing we're not compelled to eat a starch and sugar candy like a pile of cookies (nor should we eat a pile of cookies), but it's like liquorice. You have to had grown up with the flavour to crave it.
My first thought when I tasted the lokum was that this might be a good substitute for candied ginger in ginger cookies. So off I went and made ginger cookies with chopped mastic lokum sprinkled into the dough. The strong flavours of ginger cookies did work really well. On the rare occasions I could taste it within the cookie, it complemented the heavily gingered dough. I always throw in an extra tablespoonful of ginger into anything that claims to be a ginger cookie because I don't make wimpy-ass ginger cookies. The mastic lokum could by extension also be chopped into gingerbreads and spiced or fruit cakes. I was a little worried the starch gel would melt and leak if baked, but though I think the lokum pieces shrunk somewhat, they didn't melt all over the place. I did think after baking I would probably double the amount of chopped lokum from about ⅓ cup to 2 ¼ of flour in a recipe. Once we're finally through this batch of ginger cookies, I might try making some sort of loaf cake with the lokum. Chocolate beer cake seems like a good match, as does something like cinnamon apple.