Gulaman

Gulaman, in Filipino cuisine, is a bar, or powdered form, of dried agar or carrageenan extracted from edible seaweed used to make jelly-like desserts. In common usage, it also usually refers to the refreshment ''sago't gulaman, sometimes referred to as samalamig, sold at roadside stalls and vendors.

==History== Gracilaria, which produces agar, is known as , , , or in Tagalog and in other languages in the northern Philippines. It has been harvested and used as food for centuries, eaten both fresh or sun-dried and turned into jellies. The earliest historical attestation is from the Vocabulario de la lengua tagala (1754) by the Jesuit priests Juan de Noceda and Pedro de Sanlucar, where golaman or gulaman was defined as "una yerva, de que se haze conserva a modo de Halea, naze en la mar" (modern Spanish orthography: "; "an herb, from which a jam-like preserve is made, grows in the sea"), with an additional entry for guinolaman to refer to food made with the jelly.