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1
Bring sugar, water, and lemon juice to the boil.
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2
(The lemon juice is to prevent the syrup from crystallizing when it is cold.)
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3
Lower the heat, and simmer gently for 810 minutes, or until the liquid has thickened enough to coat a spoon.
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4
Stir in the rose or orange-blossom water and simmer for a minute or so.
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5
Quantities of sugar and water can be varied according to the degree of thickness required for the syrup.
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6
You can also determine the thickness by the cooking time.
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7
The longer it is simmered, the more it is reduced, the thicker it will be.
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8
It is only when the syrup has cooled that you can really know how thick it is (it appears thinner when hot).
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9
If it is not right, it can be thickened by further cooking, or thinned by adding a little water and simmering again.
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10
If used heavy-handedly, this syrup will give pastries the rather sickly-sweet stickiness which characterizes badly made pastries in pastry shops.
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11
When a syrup is used for pastries, it is added only when they are already baked, fried, or cooked.
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12
It is added very cold to the hot pastries.
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13
(The opposite view, that the syrup must be poured hot, has many adherents, but we in Egypt always held firmly to our own.)
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14
Either it is poured over them as they come out of the oven, or the pastries themselves (such as luqmat el qadi) are dropped into it for a few minutes, then lifted out, richly saturated.
