Ottoman cuisine

Clarified butter was the favorite cooking fat of the Ottoman Palace. Olive oil, although used in the palace cooking since the time of Fatih Sultan Mehmet, was used mostly for lighting lamps and in the manufacture of soaps.[6][7]

Marianna Yerasimos has proposed a classification of Ottoman soups (Ottoman Turkish: چوربا‎) based on ingredients:[8]

Hans Dernschwam, a 16th-century German traveler, confirms that çorba was a common dish of this period, prepared with butter and rice for the janissary corps. According to Dernschwam, most 16th-century Ottoman soups began with a base of chicken stock and rice, with different vegetables added, although lamb stock was also used.[8]

Soup could be thickened with a mixture of egg and flour or bread and an acidic ingredient such as lemon juice, and served over stale bread. This style of soup could be found, with some variations, in Balkan territories like Romania and Hungary, as well as in Turkey.[8]

Hand-cut soup noodles called erişte are a basic dish found in Central Asian cuisine.[8]

Sugar was still prohibitively costly in the 17th-century; far more common were honey and syrups like pekmez, made with grapes.

The wheat berry pudding aşure, in modern times a part of the Islamic holy day Ashura, has roots in the harvest rituals of the Neolithic period, since which time domesticated wheat is known to have been cultivated at Karaca Dağ.[4]

There are multiple competing theories of the origin of baklava, variously ascribing it to the Ancient Roman placenta cake, Perisan lauzinaj or the influence of Central Asian desserts, found also in the layered dessert güllaç, thin sheets of pastry dough soaked in rosewater-infused milk and layered with chopped nuts and pomegranate.[4] Dernschwam describes a baklava-like dish made by cooking thin wafers of starch flour and egg white, then filling with layers of sugared nuts with rosewater and nutmeg to create a dessert about as thick as a finger.

Majun, compote and halva were sweets made by palace chefs.[5]

Dernschwam describes zerde as rice pudding that is cooked in honeyed water and colored with saffron, garnished with toasted almonds and served with fruits. Muhallebi is also listed among the foods Dernschwam encountered on his travels.

Dernschwam wrote that, while cabbage was found, the Turks did not know how to cook it with beef like the Hungarians, saying they instead pickled it, a common preparation in those days.[9]

Dernschwam described a dish stuffed vegetable dish of young pumpkins and aubergines (which he calls podliczschan), stuffed with cubed mutton and garlic filling, and served with yogurt. He also describes the dish called sarma or stuffed vine leaves cooked with sour plums, which he compares with a rolled krapfen (a type of filled pastry from German cuisine).

Of the four Ottoman Palaces, Edirne Palace, Topkapı Palace, Dolmabahçe Palace and Yıldız Palace, it is Topkapı that for 400-years oversaw the development of the classical Ottoman palace cuisine. Topkapı could host up to 4,000 persons at a time and the kitchen staff was huge. At one 18th-century event at least 1,000 chefs were required to prepare a meal of pilaf, soup and zerde for 10,000 attendant janissaries.[5]

A palace register from 1692 lists different kinds of vegetables eaten in the palace, squash (kabak-ı Mısır), celery, lettuce (marul), cucumber, garlic, aubergins, borage (lisan-ı seveir), cowpeas, spinach, turnips, vine leaves, Jew's mallow (müluhiye), beets, carrots and okra. Parsley, dill, mint, and tarragon are also listed among the foodstuffs allocated for the Sultan. Green tomatoes (kavata) are listed for the Hasseki Sultan (the Sultan's favorite concubine), who also received snow for iced coffee and to cool sharbat and hoşab. Chicken was reserved for the elite, and pigeon only for the Sultan, hasseki, other potential concubines and princesses. Some large portions allotted to non-imperial high-ranking servants like the female steward of the harem, who received one sheep and 10 chickens per day, indicate that persons in these roles were responsible for feeding their subordinates.[10]

Ottoman palace cuisine was amalgamated and honed in the Imperial Palace's kitchens by chefs brought from certain parts of the empire to create and experiment with different ingredients. These chefs were tested and hired by their method of cooking rice, a simple dish. They were brought over from various places for the express purpose of experimenting with exotic textures and ingredients and inventing new dishes.

Each cook specialized in specific tasks. All dishes intended for the sultan were first passed by the palate of the Chesnidjibashi, or imperial food taster, who tested the food for both poison and taste. The creations of the Ottoman palace's kitchens also filtered to the common population, for instance through Ramadan events, and through the cooking at the yalis of the pashas, and from there on to the people at large.

Some of the more extravagant dishes remained as palace specialities and have had only limited diffusion:

• Roasted pigeon[11]
• Ayva dolma[12] and kalye (vegetable -or fruit as in this case- cooked without meat, with olive oil and tomato "salça" after a short sautéing)
• Kavun dolması (Stuffed melon)[13][14]