What is Gaz?

Gaz is Persian nougat, and the real thing comes from Isfahan, where it has been made for centuries from the sap (angebin) of the tamarisk shrub that grows in the surrounding countryside. That sap is whipped with egg white, rosewater, and sugar into a chewy, translucent nougat, then loaded with whole pistachios or almonds and cut into squares or rounds that are dusted in so much powdered sugar or flour that opening the box is a minor hazard. The texture is the whole appeal: it pulls and stretches and sticks to your molars, sweet and floral and nutty all at once. Cheaper commercial gaz swaps the tamarisk sap for glucose syrup, and Isfahanis will tell you — at length — that it is not the same thing at all.

Gaz is fundamentally a hospitality and gift object. It shows up in a dish on the coffee table when guests arrive, gets served alongside tea after dinner, and travels the world stuffed into the luggage of anyone visiting family abroad — a box of good Isfahan gaz is a currency of love in the Iranian diaspora. During Nowruz it joins the spread of sweets and nuts (ajil) that every household puts out for the two weeks of visiting. There is an art to eating it politely, since it fights back, and there is no art at all to the powdered sugar ending up on your shirt, which it will.