Pomegranate molasses vs Anardana
The short answer
One fruit, two souring agents. Anardana is the seed of sour pomegranates dried with its pulp, a dry acid of northern India and Pakistan for dishes that must stay dry. Pomegranate molasses is the juice boiled down to a dark concentrate, used from the eastern Mediterranean to Iran; it brings sugar, liquid and a caramelised note with its acid.
Side by side
| Pomegranate molasses | Anardana | |
|---|---|---|
| Botanical identity | Punica granatum L. | Punica granatum L. |
| Part used | fruit | seed, fruit |
| Origin | Not established | Iran and the surrounding region of West and Central Asia, with a very long cultivated history and early spread west into the Mediterranean and east into South Asia. The material used for anardana specifically comes from the wild and semi-wild sour populations of the western Himalaya. |
| Flavour notes | sour, sweet, caramelised, fruity | sour, fruity, faintly sweet, astringent |
| Heat | Scoville does not apply | Not established |
| Flavour | Sweet, and sour from the acid of the fruit, with a caramelised note from the boiling; thick enough to pour slowly. This is the wording of the Hatay registration, written by the body that holds the name. No tasting panel was found. | Sharply sour, with a fruity sweetness behind it and a faint astringency at the finish. The acidity arrives first and does not have the clean single-note edge of citric acid — there is dried-fruit depth under it, which is what distinguishes it from amchur and from lemon. |
| Aroma | Not established | Faint and fruity, closer to raisin or prune than to fresh pomegranate, with a slight winey edge. It is a mild-smelling spice — the interest is in the taste, not the aroma, which is unusual in this catalogue. |
Which should you buy?
Pomegranate molasses
Sold only as a bottled liquid, so the question does not arise.
Anardana
Buy whole. This is one of the stronger cases in the catalogue, and for an unusual reason: quality here is visible in the whole grain and invisible in the powder. Anardana that is mostly bare seed with little pulp looks obviously poor as grains and looks like anything else once milled, and the powder is a natural place to bulk out a batch. The whole seed also keeps two to four times as long. The one genuine argument for the powder is that grinding anardana is a nuisance — the sticky pulp gums the mill — and that is a real inconvenience rather than a reason, since pounding it in a mortar with a pinch of the dish’s salt works and takes a minute.
Full detail on pomegranate molasses and anardana, including evidence grades and sources for every claim above.