Falooda is one of the world’s oldest desserts — and one of the coolest

IT IS 98 DEGREES in the shade, and the humidity weighs on you like a blanket. Your skin is sticky, and the hot summer air smells like the sweat of all humanity. But then, through the wobbling waves of heat, something vivid catches your weary eye: a glittering food stand selling a carnival in a glass, a bombastic concoction of gooey white cream flecked with dots of black and striped with bright colors that speak of brain-piercing sweetness. In the heat, the glass is frosted over and beginning to sweat, the promise of cold pulling at you like a candy-colored oasis. You plunk down your money and receive, in return, one of the world’s oldest desserts: falooda.

Falooda originated as a North Indian/Persian Mughal treat called faloodeh that originally was enjoyed by royalty. At its most basic, it consists of frozen vermicelli noodles and rosewater syrup, a refined hot-weather treat very like a granita. The concept moved south into the Indian subcontinent with the Mughals, and the falooda you are likely to encounter in the subcontinent today, likely developed by street vendors in Mumbai, looks like an elaborately embellished milkshake or liquid parfait, a cross between a dessert and a drink better consumed with a spoon. This lavish drinkable bacchanale of the subcontinent’s favorite sweet flavors generally contains goodies such as rose syrup, kulfi ice cream (often made with saffron or cardamom), pistachio, almonds, and sometimes fruit and Jell-O.

Falooda is often described as “the boba of South Asia,” although the drink precedes true bubble tea by hundreds — if not thousands — of years. Desi falooda, like the original Persian faloodeh, consists of ice cream or cold thickened milk; soaked vermicelli (noodles as thin as angel hair pasta and made from various starches such as arrowroot and sago); and a glial substance approximating boba made from sweet basil seeds, aka sabja seeds, which turn into gelatinous alien caviar when immersed in liquid.

The term “basil seed” is fraught with confusion. Most basils are technically all the same plant, Ocimum basilicum, and the most common variety is “sweet basil,” the fluffy green leaves you take home in a plastic clamshell or as a doomed houseplant. Ocimum basilicum exists as various cultivars, like Thai basil, purple basil or hybrids such as lemon basil. Holy basil, by contrast, is a slightly different plant, Ocimum tenuiflorum, aka Ocimum sanctum, aka tulsi in Hindi, and is usually consumed in a medicinal context, in tea or in supplements. The seeds for holy basil and sweet basil look basically identical, and are often marketed interchangeably.

The seeds you want for falooda, sweet basil seeds, are usually sold as sabja. They look, to the squeamish, like bugs, and to the culinary-minded, rather like chia seeds; like chia seeds, sabja turn into a goo of clear, snotlike mucilage when soaked in water, lending falooda its distinctively glial, non-Newtonian fluid texture. (Note: Unlike chia seeds, which can be eaten dry and sprinkled in salads or granola, sabja seeds are too tough to consume until they’ve been soaked.)

Much like the basil plant itself, the notion of falooda has morphed into many forms and goes by many names across central, south and east Asia (there are even versions in South America). And though these drinks/desserts often contain very different local ingredients, it is impossible not to recognize the relationship of this subcontinental explosion of cold, gooey goodies to the phaluda of Myanmar, the fruit-forward halo-halo of the Philippines, and the es cendol or bandung of Southeast Asia, which sometimes contains sweet corn kernels in addition to the fruity syrup.

In my opinion, falooda is a bit elaborate to make at home, especially on a hot day, but you can find it ready for consumption at many Indian or Persian restaurants, boba tea stands or Middle Eastern dessert parlors during one of Seattle’s now-annual heatwaves.