Assidat Zgougou
A dark pudding made from Aleppo pine seed, layered with cream and nuts. Made for the Prophet’s birthday, tastes of nothing else, and takes real work to get right.
Photograph credit: Assida Zgougou familiale by DrRachT · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons · this resized copy is shared under the same licence
What to Put on the Table With Assidat Zgougou
- Turkish coffee
- Mint tea
- Fresh dates
Photograph credit: Assida Zgougou Tunisia 20240915 113756 by Habib M'henni · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons · this resized copy is shared under the same licence
How to Make Assidat Zgougou
Tap a step to highlight it, or turn on Cook Mode for large type and step-by-step focus.
-
Wash the zgougou in several changes of cold water, rubbing it between your hands, until the water runs clear. This takes five or six changes.
-
Blend it with 600 ml of the water on high for 3 minutes.
-
Strain through a fine sieve, pressing hard, then strain the liquid again through muslin. Discard the solids. Rinse the blender and repeat with the remaining 600 ml water to extract the rest.
-
Whisk the cornflour, sugar and salt into the strained dark liquid until smooth, then cook over medium heat, stirring constantly, for 12 minutes until thick and glossy.
-
Pour into a wide dish and cool, then chill 120 minutes until set.
-
For the cream, whisk the cornflour into a little of the cold milk, heat the rest with the sugar, add the slurry and cook 5 minutes until thick. Stir in the vanilla and orange blossom water and cool.
-
Spread the cream over the set base and top thickly with the pistachios, almonds, pine nuts and coconut.
Related guide: Prep, cook and total time.
Something wrong or unclear in this recipe? Report a problem with this recipe.
Worth Knowing Before You Cook
Wash the seed until the water runs clear. Grit is the failure mode.
Strain twice, the second time through muslin.
The colour is meant to be dark grey-brown.
Keeping What's Left
Refrigerated for 4 days, covered. Add the nuts only when serving. Do not freeze.
Common Questions
How long does Assidat Zgougou take to make?
40 minutes of preparation and 40 minutes of cooking, plus 2 hours of chilling until set, so allow 3 hours 20 minutes from start to finish. The method also needs time for cooling in the dish, which it does not time, so treat that as a minimum. The recipe serves 8.
Nutrition per Serving
No nutrition figures are given for this recipe: they cannot be worked out reliably from its ingredient list (some ingredient lines cannot be read). Why some recipes have none.
Your notes on this recipe
Cooked this? Keep a note for next time
Compiled by Turab
Checked by script for timings, diet labels and nutrition arithmetic. How the recipes are checked. Found a mistake? Tell us.
First published ; last changed .
You Might Also Like
More Tunisian cooking and desserts ideas from Weekly Delight.
Masfouf
Couscous steamed and then worked with butter or oil, sugar, raisins and nuts — the sweet version, eaten for…
Mhalbiya
Rice-flour pudding scented with geranium water rather than rose, which is the Tunisian signature. Set in glasses and…
Samsa
Triangles of pastry filled with ground almonds and sesame, fried and soaked in a lemon syrup. Not the Central Asian…
Gâteau Basque
A thick shortcrust shell around a layer of vanilla pastry cream or black cherry jam, scored across the top before…
Makroudh
Semolina diamonds filled with a date paste scented with orange and cinnamon, fried and dipped in honey. Kairouan…
Pithiviers
Almond cream sealed between two discs of puff pastry, the top scored in curves from the centre. The scoring is what…