page_title: Muhallebi
section_title: Variations
hierarchical_section_title: Muhallebi / Variations
caption_attribution_description: Català: Amb melmelada de taronja.
context_page_description: Muhallebi is a milk pudding that has legendary origins dating to Sassanid Persia. The basic ingredients are rice, sugar, rice flour and milk. The dessert is popular in Turkey, Israel, and other Mediterranean countries.
  In the Middle Ages, muhallebi and its European counterpart blancmange were made with shredded chicken. The traditional recipe is still common in Turkey.
context_section_description: In the modern era the traditional tavuk göğsü is no longer widely available, except in Turkey. This pudding does not taste like chicken but the shredded meat gives it a distinctive texture. George Coleman De Kay said the pudding "owes its peculiar excellent flavour to the presence of the breasts of very young chickens, which are by some means so intimately blended and incorporated with the custard as to be scarcely distinguishable". Kazandibi is a variation of the classic tavuk göğsü where a thin layer of pudding is caramelized before the custard is poured over it and allowed to set. The finished pudding is served upside down with the caramelized side on top.
  Mastic can be used as a flavoring for muhallebis—this is called sakızlı muhallebi. Rice flour is used to thicken the pudding, but this can be combined or replaced with corn starch or wheat starch depending on the cook's preference.
  In Israel, "malabi" (מלבי) is a popular dessert is usually flavored with culinary rose water. It is  made from milk cooked with corn starch or rice flour and rose syrup, and sometimes the milk is replaced with almond juice to make the pudding pareve.
  Similar to the Turkish keşkül, the Israeli version is topped with chopped pistachios, desiccated coconut and flavorings such as rose or orange water.
  Chefs Yotam Ottolenghi and Sami Tamimi, in Jerusalem: A Cookbook, define malabi as the "dessert form of sahlab," both a flour made from the tubers of the orchid genus Orchis and the name for the warm, less viscous version of the cold dessert.
  In Cyprus, mahalebi or mahalepi (Μαχαλεπί in Greek) does not contain milk. Cypriot muhallebi is made from water, sugar, nisete flour (it can still be made from corn starch or corn flour) and rose water (optional). When the muhallebi is set the Cypriots add rose squash/cordia/syrup called triantafyllo (τριαντάφυλλο in Greek) on top of it.
caption: Moroccan-style mahalabiya with orange flavoring
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