Mastic
What it is
A natural resin — translucent, brittle, pale-yellow "tears" — wept from the bark of the mastic tree (Pistacia lentiscus var. chia). It is grown commercially almost exclusively on the southern part of the Greek island of Chios, where it holds a Protected Designation of Origin.
How it's made
Cultivators score the tree's bark in summer; the resin bleeds out, drips down, and dries on the ground or on cleared earth into hardened teardrop crystals ("tears of Chios"), which are then cleaned and sorted by hand — a painstaking, traditional harvest.
Flavor profile
Pine, cedar, and incense with a cool, faintly piney-bitter, almost mentholated quality; aromatic and resinous, with a slightly sweet edge. In small amounts it adds an ethereal, hard-to-place perfume; in excess it turns medicinal. Ground mastic is often blended with sugar before use because the resin alone is sticky and clumps.
Culinary uses
Greek, Turkish, Cypriot, and Middle Eastern sweets and breads — Turkish delight (lokum), mahleb-and-mastic Easter breads (tsoureki), Greek "ypovrychio" spoon sweet, and the famously chewy, stretchable Turkish/Arab ice cream dondurma (mastic plus salep give it that pull); rice puddings; and spirits — Greek mastiha liqueur, and a flavoring in some arak and raki. It was, quite literally, the original chewing gum.
Regional variations
Chios mastic is the genuine article and the protected standard; lower-grade or non-Chios "mastic" resins exist but lack the PDO pedigree and refinement.
Cultural & historical context
Mastic has been harvested on Chios for thousands of years, prized by the Romans and Byzantines and so valuable under Genoese and then Ottoman rule that theft of mastic was punishable by death. The English word "masticate" comes from chewing this very resin — it was the ancient world's breath-freshener and tooth-cleaner. Its near-total confinement to one corner of one Greek island makes it one of the most geographically singular spices on Earth: a flavor a whole region's confectionery depends on, produced almost nowhere else.
Reference notes
Tags: `Whole` (tears/crystals), `Ground/Powdered`, `resin spice`, `PDO`, `aromatic`. Flag `single-origin: Chios, Greece` and `texturizing` (its role in dondurma). Related ingredients: Mahleb, Rosewater, Salep, Orange-blossom water. Related cuisines: Greek, Turkish, Cypriot, Levantine. Suggested links: → Rosewater, → Turkish Delight, → Mahleb.