New for 2026 - Sekanjabin

Back in 2023 a young friend of ours had graduated from one of our great Universities - and in the time-honoured fashion, had some time on her hands.

Beatrix is something of a foodie, and writes beautifully - so, not being one to look a gift horse in the mouth, I suggested she could write some articles for our website. Since we couldn't afford to pay much more than a pittance I gave her the widest possible brief - she could write pretty much whatever she liked, on whatever subject, provided that it had some vague connection to vinegar.

Eventually, of course, she went off to do Great Things. But she left us a series of articles - some of which you'll still find on the site. I confess some of the articles were on things I knew nothing about.

Time passed. One day I happened to cast an eye at the user-data for our website. It shows all sorts of stuff, much of which I don't understand - but it had a list of our most-viewed web pages. Most of the top pages were exactly as you would expect (home page, store, etc). But one entry very high up the list caught my eye - it was an article which Beatrix had written, about a Persian vinegar-based syrup which I had never heard of:

How to make Sekanjabin

Strange. I might not have heard of Sekanjabin, but clearly there were others, more in-the-know, who had. I checked a month down the line to see if it was a one-off. It was still one of the most-viewed pages. And again every month thereafter.

So I made the recipe. It was delicious! A Persian vinegar-based syrup: sweet-and-sour, honey vinegar flavoured with honey, mint and rosewater. I started making up quantities for my own use. I use it diluted with a cold drink with loads of ice, or as a dressing for green salads, bean salads, lentil salads (either with a little bit of oil, or just undiluted straight out the bottle).

I did a bit of googling and discovered a traditional use is as a dip for lettuce leaves. So, instead of a salad, just a bowl in the middle of the table with a bit of sekanjabin syrup in it, some cos lettuce leaves, dip them in and eat - lovely.

We did some testing to get it ready for larger scale production - and, 3 years down the line from Beatrix's original article, we have our Sekanjabin ready to bring to market.

Available via our webstore