Sykoutris loukoumi has come from the same workshop in Ermoupoli, on Syros, since 1928, six years after its founder arrived as a 15-year-old refugee from Smyrna.
Today, his daughter, Dina Sykoutri, keeps Sykoutris loukoumi going with her own daughter, Angeliki, the third generation of the family in the trade.
She lives in the house directly above the premises. Visitors know the name from the distinctive Sykoutris loukoumi boxes in shops around town and near the port.
For her, loukoumi was never simply a confection. It was the family business and the smell of her childhood. Loukoumi also held her father’s refugee memory and her way of reading Ermoupoli.
Dina Sykoutri also sees the town and its famous sweet as inseparable.
“Ermoupoli and loukoumi are twins. Some people think, ‘What is it, after all? A small cube with a little sugar.’ And yet this small cube holds the whole history of the town: the refugee experience, the hard work and the determination of people to rebuild their lives.”
Dina Sykoutri
How Sykoutris loukoumi began
Georgios Sykoutris founded the business in 1928. He had arrived on Syros in 1922, aged 15, after the Asia Minor Catastrophe drove him out of Smyrna.
By then, he also knew the craft from his family in Smyrna, whose roots lay in Kardamyla on Chios.
Behind the founding of the Sykoutris loukoumi workshop lies a story of violence, loss and rescue. As he later told his children, Georgios saw his father killed and lost his brother, Michalis, in the chaos. He also suffered injuries while trying to escape.
A candle for a childhood friend
One figure stands at the centre of the Sykoutris loukoumi story: Veli, a Turkish childhood friend of the same age.
In Georgios Sykoutris’s own telling, Veli hid him and some of his relatives in a cart. He then helped them reach the ship that carried them to safety.
Dina Sykoutri recalls how her father kept Veli’s memory alive, year after year.
“Every year, on the Feast of the Cross, my father would tell me, ‘Go and light a candle.’ ‘For whom?’ I would ask. ‘For Veli.’ For years he didn’t explain who he was. When I finally insisted, he answered, ‘If it weren’t for him, we wouldn’t exist, and neither would you.’”
Dina Sykoutri
Growing up with the smell of sugar
Raised among the cauldrons, Dina Sykoutri grew up, in effect, inside the family’s Ermoupoli workshop. From her high school years, she worked in the shop in the afternoons and right through each summer.
The retail counter stood at the front, while production took place directly behind it. That back room held a world of cauldrons, boxes, cellophane, starch, flavourings and sacks of sugar.
As she put it, “From a very young age I learned the smell of sugar and flavourings. I soaked it up so much that even today I can’t, and don’t want to, get away from it.”
Initially, she took on the simplest jobs, such as wrapping, preparing boxes, placing the papers and arranging the display cases. Gradually, she learned to tell grades of sugar apart, because the sugar could change how Sykoutris loukoumi set and felt.
Cuban sugar topped her list for Sykoutris loukoumi. “The best and most reliable for us was Cuban sugar. Excellent, and almost its equal, was Greek sugar from sugar beet. With these we had no problems at the boiling,” she said.
The Sykoutris loukoumi recipe looks simple: water, sugar and starch, plus the flavourings or nuts of each variety. However, the real difficulty lies in the proportions, the boiling time and the maker’s experience. Each maker must judge the right moment without relying only on timers and measurements.
A sweet that grew with Ermoupoli
Organised loukoumi making took root on Syros in the 19th century. It grew at the same time as refugees and merchants from Chios, Smyrna and Constantinople built the new town.
According to the most accepted historical record, the first boiling took place in 1832. Then, in 1837, one of the first official licences followed.
Dina Sykoutri, however, maintains that the Historical Archive of Syros holds even older references. “In December 1821, the first names of loukoumi makers from Smyrna and Chios appear in the records. By 1822, a host of names from Chios, Smyrna and Constantinople follows,” she said.
Loukoumi created jobs, supported families and travelled from the port of Ermoupoli across Greece. Above all, it entered every stage of island life: engagements, weddings, births, baptisms, feast days, festivals, funerals and memorials.
In 2019, the island’s signature sweet also entered Greece’s National Inventory of Intangible Cultural Heritage as Syros loukoumi.
Dina Sykoutri explains why loukoumi from Syros stands apart.
“These people achieved the impossible: they fitted a whole town inside a loukoumi. Loukoumi never asked anything of anyone, while historically it gave everything. People make loukoumia everywhere. But they are not all from Syros; they do not all carry this history.”
Dina Sykoutri
Today, the Sykoutris loukoumi workshop still operates in Ermoupoli, in the same premises, with the same cauldrons. Dina still wears the white apron, with her daughter at her side. Angeliki is the third generation after Georgios, the 15-year-old who arrived from Smyrna with almost nothing.
Source: travel.gr
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