Halva

Halva is the name for a broad variety of dense, sweet confections eaten across North Africa, East Africa, Eastern Europe, the Balkans, West Asia, Central Asia and South Asia. Recipes differ widely by region but generally produce a thick paste, historically made from ingredients such as flour, butter, oil, saffron, rosewater, milk, turmeric and sugar. The confection traces to Persia; by the seventh century the word denoted a paste of dates mixed with milk on the Arabian Peninsula, and by the ninth century it had widened to cover many sweetened preparations, with formal recipes recorded in thirteenth century Arabic cookbooks. The English word entered use in the mid nineteenth century by way of Ottoman Turkish and Romanian, ultimately from an Arabic word for a sweet confection. This description is adapted from Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; changes were made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/