Wine to Sherbet

With the advent of Islam, Iranians generally discarded the old Persian words for wine (badeh and mey) and replaced them with sharab, Arabic for “sweet drink.” That is the source of the English “syrup.”

But renaming the forbidden was not enough. They needed a new name for their nonalcoholic drink, and sharbat was born. Its basis was the ice and snow that Iranians had learned to preserve during the hot summer months in spectacular domed ice wells on the edges of towns and along caravan routes. The flavorings were syrups, made by combining fruit or vegetable juice with honey, sugar, or date or grape molasses and boiling the mixture down to intensify the flavor. Sipped through a mound of crushed ice or snow, the syrup became a delightful drink.