Thickened must

Thick fruit juice without added sugar, which is obtained by evaporation under the hot Central Asian sun or over fire, and is called a tasty oriental dessert beckmes. It is essentially concentrated honey from fruits, berries or vegetables, widespread in Transcaucasia, viticulture areas in southern Russia, Central Asia and Turkey.

Humanity learned to cook bekmes when it began to cultivate berry shrubs and fruit trees: a plentiful crop needed processing. As you know, the dessert name has ancient Turkic roots: bekmes comes from the word bekmez, meaning grape juice. In the East, it is called rekmez, which is due to the Turkish pronunciation of the word pekmez.

The most famous varieties of bekmes are melon, mulberry and grape - the latter, by the way, has its own name - doshob. Such dessert fruit honey is prepared in Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. In the south of Russia, pear, quince and apple bekmes are more common. It is customary to use it when baking sweet confectionery: cookies, homemade pies, waffles, muffins, sherbets, jam, Turkish onion. In addition, bekmes are often added to berry kvasses, compotes, jelly and fruit drinks.

Close relatives of bekmes are Romanian and Moldavian yellow-like pella jam, which are made not from fruits, but on the basis of decoctions and juices, nardek watermelon honey, produced from the flesh of overripe watermelons. In addition, condensed berry and fruit juice with added sugar is called kyem, and irchal is a bekmes, which is mixed with whole berries in the same ratio and boiled until thickened.

All these species of bekmes carry a particle of hot sun along with a lot of organic acids and vitamins. They find application not only in the confectionery and wine-making area, but also have medicinal properties. So, bekmes is especially useful in the presence of diseases such as low blood and anemia, this fruit honey is used in baby food as a natural replacement for bee honey. The use of bekmes helps to restore the strength of recovering people who are in a rehabilitation period after suffering severe diseases.

By its essence, bekmes is molasses: it is not for nothing that in Georgia there is an analogue of this word, which just means molasses or thick sweet syrup. Becmes is perfectly stored, and when diluted with water, it has a taste of natural juice. After all, it is no coincidence that the bekmes recipe appeared in those countries in which the harvest is so great that its preservation is a great art.