A Mirror of Society: Cuisine

As the Ottomans advanced westwards they continued the work of spreading plants and foodways into Europe via the Balkans, as the Arabs had done earlier via Spain. The Hungarian historian Sandor Takats (1860-1932) describes how in the 16th century the Turks introduced many varieties of fruit, flowers and herbs into Hungary, cultivating vegetable gardens and orchards wherever they settled. After the recapture of the Hungarian town of Fülek, the Turkish gardens were found to be so numerous that even after distributing one to each soldier many still remained unclaimed. As a result Hungary became the intermediary for the introduction of many new varieties of fruit and flowers into western Europe.

During this period new foods discovered in America began to make an impact on the cuisines of the Old World. Some of these made their way directly from Spain into Ottoman Turkey, before they found their way to the rest of Europe. Historian Bert Fragner writes, ‘Tomatoes, sunflowers, Indian corn, paprikas and chillis, not forgetting the amazing turkey, found their way within an astonishingly short time via Spain straight to the areas of the Ottoman Empire along the eastern Mediterranean shores, arriving in Italy only some decades later.’

The way a Mexican bird came to be known throughout the English-speaking world as the ‘turkey’ is indeed amazing. The Spanish were naturally aware of the origin of this American bird, calling it Indian chicken, a name that the Ottomans adopted in Turkish translation and passed on to the Austrians who abbreviated the name to ‘Indian’. However, by the time the strange new bird appeared in England no memory of its American origin attached to it. Instead it had acquired an association with Turkey, long a source of exotics and an important English trading partner. So in English the bird became known as the Turkey cock. Abbreviated to turkey, the name, and possibly European descendants of the bird itself, were carried back across the Atlantic. America’s most celebrated native bird is thus named after Turkey, in an indelible tribute to the role played by this country in western culinary culture.

In these days of mass communications it is hard to imagine such confusion over origin, but in the past it was frequently the case that commodities were thought to come from places that were merely intermediaries in their trade or dissemination. Thus sweet oranges are still known as portakal (i.e. ‘Portugal’) in Turkey, since it was via Portugal that this species of orange spread to Turkey. Similarly maize is known in Turkish as mısır (‘Egypt’), while in English this grain was known as Turkish wheat until the 19th century, in French as blé de Turquie and by equivalent designations in Germany, Holland, Russia, and Italy. The botanist Ruellius first cited the name Frumentum turcicum in 1536. The supposed Turkish origin of maize was therefore entrenched within a few decades of the arrival of maize from America, and it was via Ottoman lands that this American plant spread into most of Europe. The beans found in America were called ‘Turkish beans’ by the first Dutch and Swedish writers on America’, since Turkey and the Middle East were a source of many varieties of beans, which featured largely in the cookery of the region.

The Ottoman Empire, with its own fertile lands and wide trading links with China, India, Africa and Europe, was a source of spices and foods commonplace in supermarkets everywhere today, but which just a few centuries ago were exotic luxuries. As late as 1676 dried figs were still such a rarity in England that even the king could not obtain enough for his needs. Charles II commanded Sir John Finch, ambassador to the court of Sultan Mehmed IV, to secure a regular supply of this fruit, and as a result of negotiations in Istanbul it was stipulated in a trade agreement between England and Turkey that two shiploads of figs should be allowed to be exported annually from Izmir for the use of the king’s kitchen.

Examples of Ottoman culinary influence on western cuisine abound. Pastrami, the Turkish pastırma (cured pressed beef whose name means ‘causing to be pressed’), found its way into western cuisine, as did salep, a hot drink made from orchid root, that was once widely sold on the streets of French and English cities. Puff pastry, which originated in Iran and early became a feature of Arab cuisine, was carried on the one hand by the Arabs into Spain and several centuries later reintroduced by the Turks via Vienna, where it was transformed into croissants and Danish pastries. The paper thin rolled pastry which was an ancient characteristic of Turkish cuisine and had been observed by Broquière in the 15th century became the strudel pastry of central Europe. This pastry was the basis of countless savoury and sweet Turkish dishes, of which baklava was the jewel in the crown. Making baklavaso delicate that a coin dropped from a height would penetrate the eighty or so diaphanous layers to strike the tray beneath was one of the tests Turkish cooks had to pass to be promoted to master’s rank.

Coffee is probably the most renowned of all Turkish influences. Coffee drinking began with the Arabs, passed to the Turks, and the first coffee house opened in Istanbul in 1553. The offering of coffee to guests took on a ritual significance in Turkish etiquette, and among the upper classes complex formalities attended its serving in porcelain cups and richly jewelled holders. One of the earliest European travellers to Turkey to mention coffee was George Sandys, who around 1610 wrote:

‘Although they be destitute of Taverns, yet have they their Coffa-houses, which something resembles them. There sit they chatting most of the day, and sip of a drink called Coffa (of the berry that it is made of) in little China dishes: as hot as they can suffer it: black as soot, and tasting not much unlike it.’

These first unfavourable impressions of coffee quickly changed. The Dutch first shipped coffee beans to Europe in 1637, and the first coffee house in England was opened in Oxford in 1650 by a Turkish Jew named Jacob. According to a probably apocryphal story, the Viennese caught the coffee drinking habit later in 1683, when the retreating Turkish army left sacks of coffee beans behind after the siege of Vienna. Although coffee had been known in France earlier, its rise to the height of fashion at the court of Versailles dates from the Turkish ambassador Süleyman Ağa’s visit to Paris in 1688-1689. He introduced his French guests to coffee drinking in the magnificent style of the Turkish court, servants on bended knee presenting them with coffee in cups of egg-shell porcelain in holders of gold and silver, set on embroidered silk doylies fringed with gold. So fashionable did it become that in the 18th century Louis XV liked to brew his own coffee, and a portrait of his mistress Mme de Pompadour depicts her in Turkish costume sipping coffee and holding a Turkish pipe. Just as the hamam or Turkish bath became fashionable in London, where they were known as hummums, so did the Turkish style coffee house. These became a lasting social institution, evolving into the clubs for English gentlemen.

Strange twists of fate have carried Turkish dishes in unexpected directions. When King Charles XII of Sweden was defeated by Peter the Great in 1709, he fled to Turkey hoping to persuade the sultan to lend him military support against Russia. These hopes did not materialise, but meanwhile he and a large retinue remained in exile in Turkey until 1714. During these five years the king ran up such huge debts that he was followed home to Sweden by his Turkish creditors, along with their cooks, and remained there until 1732. The result was dolmades, the Swedish version of Turkish stuffed vegetables known as dolma.