Booza
| Type | Ice cream |
|---|---|
| Main ingredients | Milk, salep, mastic |
 Cookbook: Booza  Media: Booza | |
Booza (بوظة), or mastic ice cream, is an elastic, sticky, high-level melt resistant ice cream, which should delay melting in the hotter climates of the Arab world, where it is most commonly found.
The ice cream is usually and traditionally made with an ingredient called Sahlab (سَحْلَب) or Salep (Turkish: salep), which provides it with the ability to resist melting at the speed that other regular ice creams are affected by. Sahlab or Salep is also a primary ingredient in the Turkish version of this style of ice cream called Dondurma, and the Persian version called Bastani.
Iraq
In Iraq, it is customary to eat the ice cream on square wooden sticks.
Levant
Booza is prevalent mainly in Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and Palestine, because of their proximity to the regional growth of a tree called Pistacia lentiscus. There are gum Arabic ice cream vendors who tend to show tourists how they grind the focus ingredient, mastic, and pound it while singing and playing music.
Ancient Damascus
In the Old City of Damascus, there is an ice cream store named Bakdash that is famous throughout the Arab world for its stretchy and chewy ice cream which features Mastic. It is a popular attraction for tourists from the Middle East and around the world
Australia
A brother and sister team (Jilbert El-Zmetr and Tedy Altree-Williams) pioneered and created the first packaged version of Booza in Australia in 2011. Using on the best local ingredients together with Salep and Mastic (from the Island of Chios, Greece), they recreated the traditional form of Booza and packaged this in a take home format available to consumers.