Cayote Preserve with Walnuts from Northern Argentina
Dulce de cayote is the traditional sweet of north-western Argentina: the fibrous flesh of the cayote squash is cooked slowly with sugar, cinnamon and cloves until the fibres turn translucent and sit in an amber syrup. Served with walnuts, it is the inevitable end to any northern meal.
What makes it is the texture: they are long threads, not a jam. Which is why the flesh is pulled apart with a fork along the grain and never cut.
Cayote (fig-leaf gourd) is hard to find outside Latin America. If you cannot get it, use spaghetti squash: it has the same threaded structure and behaves very similarly as it cooks down. In Spain the same fruit becomes cabello de ángel — angel hair — which describes the result exactly.
🔎 What is fig-leaf gourd? — where it comes from, what goes in it and how it differs.
Ingredients
- 1 cayote squash (about 2-3 kg), or spaghetti squash
- Granulated sugar (the same weight as the flesh you end up with)
- 2 cinnamon sticks
- 4 or 5 cloves
- 200 g walnut halves, to serve
- Water (as little as possible)
Method
- 1
First you have to soften the skin, which is very hard. Either give it 20 minutes in a hot oven, or boil it whole until the skin starts to split. Peel it carefully while it is still warm.
- 2
Open the squash and take out all the black seeds. With a fork or with your hands, start pulling the flesh apart along the grain of the fibre. It is essential not to cut it, so the threads stay long.
- 3
Weigh the threaded flesh you have. Put it in a large bowl and add the same weight of sugar (a 1:1 ratio). Leave it to steep for 12 hours or overnight, so the sugar draws the juice out of the fruit.
- 4
Transfer the mixture to a heavy-based pan. Add the cinnamon sticks and the cloves. If it has released little liquid, add half a cup of water.
- 5
Cook over very gentle heat, stirring with a wooden spoon from time to time. The preserve is ready when the threads have turned translucent and the syrup is a soft amber or golden colour — this can take 2 to 3 hours.
- 6
Remove the cinnamon and the cloves. Store the preserve in sterilised glass jars. It keeps perfectly for months somewhere cool and dark.
- 7
Serve a portion well chilled. Add the walnut halves only at the moment of eating, so they keep their crunch.