Muharram For sharing Vegan

Aşure, Noah’s pudding

Name: Aşure, Noah’s pudding
Prep time: 210 min
Cook time: 150 min
Total time: 360 min
Yield: 12
Cuisine: Turkish
Ingredients: 250 g Hulled wheat berries; 3000 ml Water; 100 g Chickpeas, dried; 100 g White beans, dried; 400 g Sugar; 100 g Dried apricots; 100 g Dried figs; 60 g Raisins; 60 g Walnuts, to finish; 40 g Hazelnuts, to finish; 80 g Pomegranate seeds, to finish; 1 tsp Cinnamon, to finish

Wheat, chickpeas, beans and dried fruit in one pan. The sugar goes in only once the pulses are soft; added earlier, they never soften.

Desserts · Turkish · Weekend batch · For guests · Vegan · Budget

360 minTime

373Kcal / serving

4478Total kcal

Preparation: 30 min
Cooking: 150 min
Resting: 180 min
Difficulty: Practised hand
Cost: Cheap
Season: All year

Where this dish comes from

Aşure belongs to the tenth day of Muharram, the first month of the Hijri calendar. The story told in Anatolia is that when Noah’s ark came to rest, the last provisions on board were cooked together in one pot, which is why the dessert is built from so many things. Aşure is cooked in big pans and carried door to door to the neighbours; which bowl came from whose house is talked over at the table. The recipe changes from kitchen to kitchen; the one here is a plain version scaled for a family pan.

Method

Before the heat goes on

Soak the wheat, the chickpeas and the beans overnight in separate bowls of plenty of water; the soak is not included in the total time.
Chop the dried apricots and figs to the size of a raisin.

You will need: A large heavy-based pan, at least 5 litres · Two small pans for the pulses · Bowls

Drain the soaked wheat, bring it to the boil in the big pan with the water and simmer with the lid ajar for 90 minutes to two hours, topping up with hot water if it runs low.

Look for The grains should have split open, and the water should be cloudy and slightly thick.

Why The body of aşure forms when the wheat grains split and release their starch into the water, which is why no extra starch is added. Wheat starch begins to gel at 52–64 °C, but water takes hours to reach the inside of a hulled grain.

Starch gelatinised The granules soaked up water, swelled and burst into a network. It has thickened, and it will firm further as it cools. no way back

A gluten web is forming Gliadin and glutenin hydrated into an elastic net. This is what will hold the gas. no way back
Meanwhile boil the chickpeas and the beans separately in plain water until soft enough to crush between two fingers, 40 to 60 minutes, and drain them.

Look for Chickpeas and beans should crush between two fingers with no resistance.

Why The pulses cook separately because their times differ from the wheat’s and from each other’s, and their cooking water is murky and tastes of beans.

Starch gelatinised The granules soaked up water, swelled and burst into a network. It has thickened, and it will firm further as it cools. no way back

A gluten web is forming Gliadin and glutenin hydrated into an elastic net. This is what will hold the gas. no way back
Add the cooked chickpeas and beans, the dried fruit and the sugar to the wheat and cook 25 to 30 minutes more, stirring often.

Look for The aşure should fall slowly from the spoon and not be catching on the base.

Why Sugar slows the breakdown of pectin in the pulses’ skins; a chickpea that meets sugar before it is soft stays hard for hours. That is why the sugar goes in only once everything is tender. The dried fruit plumps up in this time.

If it went wrong

If it has started catching, stop stirring and move the top to a clean pan without scraping. If it is too thick, add hot water: aşure firms markedly as it cools, and looking a little loose while hot is right.

Starch gelatinised The granules soaked up water, swelled and burst into a network. It has thickened, and it will firm further as it cools. no way back

A gluten web is forming Gliadin and glutenin hydrated into an elastic net. This is what will hold the gas. no way back
Share it into bowls and leave three hours once cool; finish with walnuts, hazelnuts, pomegranate and cinnamon as you serve.

Look for Cold aşure should hold its shape in the bowl with no water pooling on top.

Why The wheat starch sets as it cools and the aşure firms enough to cut with a spoon. The topping goes on at the last moment so the nuts do not draw moisture and soften.

A gluten web is forming Gliadin and glutenin hydrated into an elastic net. This is what will hold the gas. no way back

What the model could follow

This recipe was run through the engine step by step — what goes in when, and at what temperature and for how long. The reactions above come from that run.

peak 101 °C · 363 minutes · engine 1.0.0 · confidence low

Servings

12

Ingredients

250 g Hulled wheat berries
3000 ml Water
100 g Chickpeas, dried
100 g White beans, dried
400 g Sugar
100 g Dried apricots
100 g Dried figs
60 g Raisins
60 g Walnuts, to finish
40 g Hazelnuts, to finish
80 g Pomegranate seeds, to finish
1 tsp Cinnamon, to finish

What did you think

Who is eating

Everyone A baby under one Pregnant A child An athlete Someone living with diabetes

The 1 rules we hold for this group did not fire for this dish. That does not mean the dish is suitable for them; it means those particular rules did not apply.

Not about the dish — about the person

Salt in a day

5 g

Ages 2 to 15 Context established

No separate figure is given for a child: the adult value is adjusted downward by the child’s energy requirement. So for a small child the limit is well below 5 g and moves with age — printing one number would invent a precision the source does not offer. Under one year, and 6-24 months, fall outside this recommendation altogether; added salt is not on the table at that age in any case.

World Health Organization, Salt reduction

Free sugars

10%

Strong recommendation — adults and children Context established

The same share for adults and for children. Ten per cent of a 2000-calorie day is roughly 50 g of sugar, and a single can of a fizzy drink is more than half of it. The risk of weight gain, obesity and tooth decay rises above this line.

World Health Organization, Information note about intake of sugars recommended in the WHO guideline for adults and children, 2015

5%

Conditional recommendation Context established

This one carries a different strength, and the difference is written down on purpose: 10% is a strong recommendation, 5% is conditional. That is WHO’s own distinction, and putting the two in one sentence would say the evidence behind them is equally strong.

World Health Organization, Information note about intake of sugars recommended in the WHO guideline for adults and children, 2015

Protein in a day

0.83–1.31 g/kg

Infants, children and adolescents Context established

Per kilogram the need is higher in a child than an adult, because growth wants protein too. There is no single number: it runs between 0.83 and 1.31 g by age. Which age takes which figure is not written here, because writing it without reading the table would be inventing it.

European Food Safety Authority, Dietary Reference Values for protein, 2012

The infant feeding calendar

5 years

Shapes that are a choking risk Context established

Whole nuts are not given below five years old — the reason is choking, not allergy. The same logic covers anything round and firm: quarter a grape lengthways, cut sausage along its length rather than across. The nut itself is not the problem; ground or as a butter it is fine from around six months. What changes is the shape, not the ingredient.

NHS, Foods to avoid giving babies and young children

What is done, and what is not: The salt and sugar thresholds are quoted in WHO's own words; not even WHO gives a gram figure specific to a child, only that the adult value is adjusted down by energy requirement. The approach to portions, fussy eating and texture is on the page; this child's growth curve, and any allergy they have, cannot be.

This choice is not stored anywhere.

Diets

Gluten-free Suitable with a substitution Hulled wheat Instead: Hulled wheat → Rice
Vegan Suitable as it is
Vegetarian Suitable as it is
Lactose-free Suitable as it is
Diabetes-friendly It depends Free sugar. What it does to blood glucose depends on the portion and on what is eaten with it.

This verdict comes from the recipe\u2019s own ingredient list. The label on a packaged ingredient is always the last word.

What a swap costs

Hulled wheat → Rice Stops happening: A gluten web is forming +5 kcal · -0.4 g fat · -1.4 g protein

Computed weight for weight. A ratio per pair would be better, and there is no sourced table of them, so the assumption is stated rather than hidden.

Calculated nutrition

373.1 kcal
8.5 g Protein
75.3 g Carbohydrate
6.6 g Fat
7.9 g Fibre

Per serving, computed from raw weights as bought. Cooking drives water off and sometimes adds fat, and neither is accounted for.

Vitamins and minerals · per serving

Vitamins

Vitamin A 15.4 µg · 2%
Vitamin D 0 µg · 0%
Vitamin E 1.1 mg · 9% ~
Vitamin K 4.7 µg · 6% ~
Vitamin C 1.6 mg · 2%
B1 (thiamin) 0.22 mg · 20%
B2 (riboflavin) 0.10 mg · 7%
B3 (niacin) 2.0 mg · 13%
B5 (pantothenic acid) 0.55 mg · 9%
Vitamin B6 0.24 mg · 17%
Folate 101 µg · 50%
Vitamin B12 0 µg · 0%

Minerals

Potassium 554 mg · 28%
Calcium 72.1 mg · 9%
Phosphorus 198 mg · 28%
Magnesium 79.3 mg · 21%
Iron 2.8 mg · 20%
Zinc 1.8 mg · 18%
Copper 0.49 mg · 49%
Manganese 1.6 mg · 81%
Selenium 20.5 µg · 37%
Sodium 14.9 mg · 1%

% of daily need for:

Percentages are shares of the reference values printed on food labels (Turkish Food Codex labelling regulation, Annex 13 (identical to EU Regulation 1169/2011, Annex XIII)), not a personal requirement. For sodium the reference is a ceiling. Computed from raw ingredients; cooking lowers some vitamins. "~": not measured in some of the ingredients.

USDA FoodData Central SR Legacy · ANSES Ciqual 2025 · CoFID 2021 · Swiss FCDB 7.1

composition figures unsourced · held in the system

Nutri-Score

C Per 100 g of the raw mixture, computed with the published Nutri-Score algorithm (2023 update). Confidence: low.

Nutri-Score compares a food with others of its kind; it is not a health claim or personal dietary advice on its own. Cooking drives off water, so the cooked dish may score differently.

How it was calculated

Category: general food · Negative points 5 − positive points 1 = 4

Energy 437.8 kJ → 1
Saturated fat 0.18 g → 0
Sugars 14.02 g → 4
Salt 0.01 g → 0
Protein 2.41 g → 1
Fibre 1.47 g → 0
Fruit, vegetables, legumes %6.5 → 0

Salt = sodium × 2.5. Only ingredients plainly in the fruit-vegetable-legume group are counted towards that share; doubtful ones are left out, which can only make the letter worse. Values from USDA FoodData Central and Ciqual; 76% of the weight is a close rather than exact match.

After the heat goes off

Serving

Cold or at room temperature, in bowls, with walnuts, hazelnuts, pomegranate and cinnamon. For bowls going to the neighbours, add the topping just before covering.

Keeping · 4 days

Four days in the fridge, covered and without the topping.

Cooling and reheating

It is not reheated; it is eaten cold.

Freezes

Without the topping it freezes two months in a sealed box; it weeps a little on thawing and comes back together with a stir.

What is left

Leftover aşure is good stirred into yoghurt for breakfast.

For a child

The soft grains and pulses suit a child from twelve months. Whole chickpeas and nuts are a choking risk for a small child: crush the chickpeas in their share and leave off the nuts and pomegranate.

Where to go from here

Boiling & poaching The method this recipe rests on
Hulled wheat What it does in heat, water and acid
Chickpea What it does in heat, water and acid
White beans (dry) What it does in heat, water and acid
Zerde, saffron rice pudding Similar method, or something that sits on the same table
Baked rice pudding Similar method, or something that sits on the same table
Quince in syrup Similar method, or something that sits on the same table
Weekend batch Other recipes that answer the same need
For guests Other recipes that answer the same need
Vegan Other recipes that answer the same need
Budget Other recipes that answer the same need

Taste profile

What it tastes like

The axes that define this recipe: sweet 43.

Sweet 43
Salty 2
Sour 6
Bitter 10
Umami 7
Heat 1
Richness 16
Aroma 19

This profile is computed rather than measured: the role-weighted average of its ingredients’ taste vectors, shifted by what the cooking does. The thin line is the database average on that axis.

Computed similarity