Human Flower Project
A Danish, by any other word…
Will Danish pastries now be known as “Roses of the Prophet Mohammad” in Tehran?
Raspberry Danish, or “Gol Mohammadi”
Photo: Twiggs Coffeehouse
The New York Times first reported it last week: Iran’s Commerce Ministry had decreed that Danish pastry would henceforth be called “flower of Muhammad.”
The new nomenclature was, presumably, a “freedom-fries"-style response to offensive depictions of the Prophet Muhammad in a Danish newspaper, an international flashpoint over which Tehran has recalled its ambassador from Copenhagen and stopped imports of Danish products to Iran.
Other English-language news sources picked up this crumb of a story but, disappointingly, we couldn’t be sure of the Farsi flower word itself and had just a smattering of descriptions and translations to go on. They ranged from the NY Times’ “flower that is named after the Prophet Muhammad” to “Roses of Prophet Mohammad” to iranian.com’s “Mohammadi floral pastry” and the entirely flower-less “Mohammadan pastry.”
Can any of our Farsi-reading visitors help with this story? We believe this Iranian student newspaper may have been the original source of the name-change idea.
Ispahan, Damask rose
(Rosa damascena)
Photo: Bob Bauer
Today, perhaps we’ve tracked the pastry flower down. One clue was this tiny pair of analogies on a community weblog from the United Arab Emirates.
“freedom fries
is to french fries
as
Damask rose pastry
is to danish pastry?”
We have since learned that the Damask rose, the ancient fragrant beauty long beloved throughout Persia, is called “Golesorkh,” “Gol Ward” and also “Gol Mohammadi” in Farsi.
According to this Zoroastrian site “The elegant ‘Gool-e-sorkh/Gool-e-surati’ had been nominated a ‘National Treasure’ of Persia ages before any nation deemed any other variety of rose to be a national emblem.” In fact this flower predates Mohammad himself (and, of note, as translated into English it’s named for a city in Syria, not Iran).
Much as ideologues would like to segregate lovely from loveless, ours from yours, evil doers from goodie-gumdrops, humanity, pastry and flowers won’t be so easily affixed.
Take the pastry. It was dubbed “Danish” after a New York baker L.C. Klitteng, whose cooking took America by storm in the 1920s. In Denmark itself, this delight is called “Wienerbrød," Viennese bread, “though it is completely unknown in Vienna. In Denmark, it has been known since 1840 and is said to have been created by immigrant bakers from Vienna, perhaps strike breakers.”
So here we have a pastry adored from Tehran to Tallahassee, named for the talents of an American baker who inherited the recipe from Austrian emigres, a sweet caught up in an international culture clash and renamed for a flower from Iraq that English speakers refer to via a Syrian city, a flower now principally grown in Bulgaria but sometimes called “Mohammadi” in Iran.
“‘No one is allowed to make fun of our beloved and respected Prophet,’ Hassan Nasserzadeh, a cake-shop owner in central Tehran, told Reuters.” But we all know that a just God would not stand between us and roses or bread filled with raspberry jam. And ask yourself: Doesn’t this pastry look a whole lot more like a Damask rose than a prophet or a Dane? Golesorkh it is!
(Here’s a lovely blog that goes by that name, too.)
I will never look and eat a Danish the same way again. I’ll still eat them though!! Thanks for the info.