What is Faloodeh?

Faloodeh (also paloodeh) is a frozen Persian dessert made of thin vermicelli-like starch noodles suspended in a semi-frozen syrup of rosewater and sugar, traditionally served with a sharp squeeze of fresh lime juice and sometimes sour cherry syrup. The texture is the whole event: tiny cold noodles that you spoon up like a slushie that bites back, floral and sweet from the rosewater but cut clean by the lime so it never cloys. Shiraz is its spiritual home — faloodeh-ye Shirazi is the benchmark — and a paper cup of it on a hot afternoon is one of the great small pleasures of an Iranian summer.

It is also genuinely ancient; faloodeh is often cited as one of the oldest frozen desserts in the world, with roots going back over two thousand years to the Persian practice of bringing ice down from the mountains and storing it in yakhchāls (ancient ice-houses). The classic move is to order it alongside bastani — Persia's saffron-rosewater ice cream — so you get the creamy and the icy in the same cup, a pairing Iranians will insist is non-negotiable. Diaspora Persian ice-cream shops from Los Angeles to Toronto live or die on whether their faloodeh tastes like Shiraz or like an apology.