Imperial Ottoman

Society & Culture · In depth

Ottoman Cuisine: Palace Kitchens, Feasting, Sweets, and Beverages

A guide to Ottoman cuisine — the imperial kitchen, breakfast, feasting, the food classes of the palace, classic sweets, and the beverages that shaped Ottoman social life.

Ottoman Cuisine

Ottoman cuisine was one of the great syntheses of world cooking. It drew on the Persian, Arab, Byzantine, Balkan, and Central Asian traditions brought by the dynasty’s Turkish-speaking founders, on the produce and recipes of the lands they conquered, and on a sophisticated imperial kitchen that set the standard for the whole empire. For the better part of six centuries, Ottoman food was considered among the most refined in the early modern world, and many of its dishes are still eaten across the Middle East, the Balkans, and Turkey today. The principal dishes themselves are surveyed in the companion article on traditional Ottoman dishes.

This article surveys the structure of Ottoman cuisine — the imperial kitchen, the food classes, the meal patterns of ordinary and elite households, the festive cuisine, and the beverages. It complements the broader overview of Ottoman society and culture and the architectural context of the kitchens in the article on Ottoman architecture.

The imperial kitchen

The most important institution in the history of Ottoman cuisine was the Matbah-ı Âmire, the imperial kitchen of Topkapı Palace. From the conquest of Constantinople in 1453 to the end of the empire, this vast establishment was responsible for feeding the sultan, his household, the members of the divan, the palace staff, and the visitors and pilgrims who passed through the palace gates. At its seventeenth-century peak, the imperial kitchen employed more than a thousand people and was divided into a series of highly specialized workshops, each headed by a master chef. The workings of the imperial household that it served are described in the article on the Ottoman family and the imperial harem.

The kitchen’s organization was divided into the so-called ten classes of cooks, each responsible for a particular kind of food:

  • the pilavcılar, the rice cooks, who prepared the elaborate pilavs of the palace;
  • the aşçılar, the stew and kebab cooks;
  • the börekçiler, the pastry cooks, who produced dozens of varieties of börek;
  • the tatlıcılar, the dessert and pastry cooks, masters of the baklava and the milk puddings;
  • the şerbetçiler, the sherbet makers, who prepared the dozens of fruit, flower, and spice drinks of the palace;
  • the helvacılar, the makers of the various helva puddings;
  • the kahvecibaşı, the master of the coffee service;
  • the aşçıbaşı, the chief cook;
  • the helvacıbaşı, the chief dessert cook;
  • and a number of subordinate offices for butchery, for bread, for fruit, and for the salaş — the cold-meat and meze service.

The imperial kitchen had its own gardens, its own fish ponds, its own bakeries, and its own warehouses, and the daily provisioning of the palace was a major economic activity. The records of the kitchen — preserved in the Ottoman archives in Istanbul — remain an important source for the study of food history.

The meal pattern of the elite household

In a wealthy household of the seventeenth or eighteenth century, the principal meal of the day was the midday meal, called the taam or the öğle yemeği. It was served on a low, round table (the sofra) at which the men of the household sat on cushions, and it began with a series of cold dishes — the soğuk başlangıç — followed by the main courses, the pilav, and the dessert. The women of the household ate separately, generally in the harem, and the children ate with their mothers. The harem dining rooms of the imperial household are described in the article on life in the imperial harem.

The soup was a regular part of the meal: lentil soup, yogurt soup, tripe soup, and a rich meat broth with lemon. The pilav was a constant, and the palace cook produced it in dozens of varieties: plain butter pilav, rice with currants and pine nuts, rice with chicken, rice with chestnuts, and the famous sütlü pilav with milk and sugar. The kebab was the other staple, and the kebab cooks of the palace produced a repertoire of skewered, grilled, stewed, and minced-meat dishes that is still associated with the highest form of the cook’s art.

After the main course, the table was set with desserts — fresh fruit, compotes, milk puddings, baklava, and the various helvalar — and the meal ended with coffee and a glass of water, in that order, served in the small porcelain cups of the household.

In the wealthy households of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the dinner was a more elaborate social occasion, with a procession of small courses served in the European manner, but the older Ottoman meal pattern remained the norm for most families.

Breakfast and the everyday meal

For most Ottomans, breakfast was a simple meal of bread, cheese, olives, eggs, yogurt, cucumber, and tomato, accompanied by tea or coffee. The elaborate kahvaltı of the modern Turkish table — with its dozens of small plates of cheese, olives, tomatoes, cucumbers, honey, cream, and jam — is a development of the nineteenth-century Levantine households of Istanbul and Smyrna, but its roots in the simple country breakfast of bread and dairy are clear.

The main meal of the working class family was the akşam yemeği, the evening meal of soup, pilav, a vegetable dish, and bread. Meat was a luxury, eaten once or twice a week or reserved for the weekend or a religious holiday, and a great deal of the everyday Ottoman kitchen was built around vegetables in olive oil, yogurt, and bread.

The sofra — the low round table — was the central piece of household furniture, and the etiquette of the table was a serious matter. The diners washed their hands before and after the meal, ate with the right hand only, and began the meal with the formula besmele and ended it with the praise of God. Bread was treated with great respect: to throw bread away was a sin, and stale bread was collected, dried, and given to the animals or to the poor.

Feasting and festival food

The festive cuisine of the Ottomans was a major elaboration of the everyday kitchen. The Ramadan iftar — the fast-breaking meal of the holy month — was, and remains, the central culinary event of the year. The fast was broken with a date and a glass of water or şerbet, followed by a soup, a series of small dishes, a main course, the pilav, the dessert, and the coffee. The streets of the empire’s cities were lined with the iftar tables of the mosques, the imarets, and the wealthy, and the month of Ramadan was a period of charity, hospitality, and conspicuous cooking.

The Kurban Bayramı, the Festival of the Sacrifice, was the second great culinary event of the year, marked by the ritual slaughter of a sheep or a cow, the division of the meat into thirds for the family, the relatives, and the poor, and a series of festive meals. The sünnet düğünü, the circumcision feast for a son, was a third major occasion, and the imperial circumcision feasts of the princes — particularly those of 1582 for Murad III’s son Mehmed and of 1720 for Ahmed III’s sons — were the most elaborate events of the kind in Ottoman history. They lasted for days, involved thousands of guests, and required months of preparation by the palace kitchen.

The düğün, the wedding, was the other principal festive occasion, and the Ottoman wedding feast was a complex event in which the bride and groom’s families prepared, served, and consumed a vast quantity of food over the course of several days.

The food classes of the empire

The Ottoman cookbooks of the nineteenth century divided the empire’s dishes into a series of food classes, a tradition that goes back to the fifteenth century and the Persian cookbooks of the Timurid court. The most important classification was between:

  • the pilavlar, the rice dishes;
  • the aşlar, the stews;
  • the kebaplar, the grilled and stewed meat dishes;
  • the börekler, the pastries;
  • the dolmalar, the stuffed vegetables and vine leaves;
  • the sütlü tatlılar, the milk-based desserts;
  • the şerbet tatlıları, the desserts in syrup;
  • the hoşaflar, the fruit compotes;
  • the salatalar, the salads;
  • the çorbalar, the soups;
  • and the turşular, the pickles.

This classification is still the basis of the modern Turkish kitchen, and many of the dishes listed in the earliest Ottoman cookbooks — the lamb and eggplant dishes of the Hünkar Beğendi, the cherry-stuffed dolma, the yogurt soup of the Yayla çorbası, the sugar-syrup baklava — are still in daily use.

Sweets

The sweet tradition of the Ottomans is one of the most distinctive in the world. The most famous Ottoman sweet is the baklava, the layered pastry of filo, nuts, and syrup, which is now a dessert of the entire eastern Mediterranean. The palace developed a number of more elaborate versions: the burma baklava rolled into a tube, the havuç dilimi cut into a long lozenge, the fıstıklı baklava of Gaziantep made with pistachio. The künefe, the cheese pastry soaked in syrup, is an Ottoman sweet from the southern provinces.

The milk desserts of the palace are another major category. Sütlaç, the rice pudding, kazandibi, the caramelized rice pudding, tavuk göğsü, the chicken-breast pudding thickened with rice flour and sugar, muhallebi, the milk pudding, and keşkül, the almond pudding, are the most famous.

The helvalar — the dense, sweet puddings of flour, butter, and sugar — are a third major category. The un helvası of flour, the irmik helvası of semolina, and the cevizli helva with walnuts are the most common.

Lokum, the modern Turkish delight, is generally associated with the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and the most famous Ottoman versions were made with rose water, lemon, or mastic. The akide şekeri, the rock candy, was a different sort of sweet, served with coffee, and the macun, a kind of fruit paste, was a traditional medicine and a sweet.

Beverages

The Ottoman repertoire of beverages was one of the broadest in the early modern world. The most important were:

  • water, drawn from the public fountains, the aqueducts, and the wells, and generally consumed with the meal;
  • şerbet, the sweet fruit, flower, or spice drink made by boiling the fruit or flower with sugar and water, often with a little vinegar or lemon juice to preserve it; the most popular flavors were rose, tamarind, sour cherry, and licorice;
  • ayran, the salted yogurt drink, served cold with the meal or with the kebab;
  • boza, the fermented drink of millet, served in the winter from the boza sellers of the streets;
  • salep, the hot drink of orchid flour, milk, sugar, and cinnamon, served in the winter;
  • coffee, the imported hot drink of Ethiopia and Yemen, served at all hours of the day and central to Ottoman social life (see Ottoman coffee culture);
  • tea, which became common only in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and which is now the national drink of Turkey;
  • wine, made in many parts of the empire and generally served with the meal; the best Ottoman wines were the Bozcaada, the Rhodes, and the Cyprus;
  • raki, the anise-flavored grape spirit, served with the meze course and the kebab;
  • and the soft drink of the late Ottoman period, gazoz, the local soda pop.

For an extended discussion of coffee and the coffeehouse, see the article on Ottoman coffee culture. The article on traditional Ottoman dishes surveys a number of the most famous recipes in more detail.

The cookbooks

The earliest Ottoman cookbooks were translations and adaptations of Persian and Arabic originals, but from the fifteenth century on a distinctly Ottoman cookbook tradition emerged. The most important surviving Ottoman cookbooks are:

  • the Melceü’t-Tabbâhîn of Mahmud Şemseddin Karahisarli (1764);
  • the Aşçıbaşı of the same author (1764);
  • the Nimetü’l-İrfan of Ahmet Cavid (late eighteenth century);
  • the Sofra-i Tenvir of Hüseyin Şükrü (nineteenth century);
  • the Aşçı Risalesi of Turhan Bey (nineteenth century);
  • and the cookery sections of the great encyclopedic works of Katip Çelebi and Evliya Çelebi.

These cookbooks describe hundreds of dishes in great detail, and they remain an invaluable source for the history of food in the eastern Mediterranean.

Regional cuisines

The imperial cuisine of Istanbul set the standard, but every region of the empire had its own distinctive tradition. The Aegean kitchen was known for its use of olive oil and herbs, the Black Sea for its fish, cornbread, and anchovies, the Southeast for its kebabs and its pistachio and lamb dishes, the Eastern Mediterranean for its meze and its olive oil, the Balkans for its pastries, dairy, and grilled meats. The Egyptian, Levantine, Mesopotamian, and Arabian provinces had their own distinct traditions, and the cuisines of the Balkans — particularly the Bosnian, the Bulgarian, and the Greek — produced the dishes that are now considered typical of the modern Turkish kitchen.

The meyhane tradition of the taverns of Istanbul, of the Aegean ports, and of the Greek and Armenian quarters of the city produced a different kind of cooking, centered on the meze — small plates of cold food served with raki or wine. The meze course of a typical Istanbul tavern might include hummus, haydari, acılı ezme, the spicy pepper paste, tarator, the yogurt-and-walnut dip, sarma, the vine leaves, dolma, the stuffed vegetables, and a great deal of cheese, fish, and salad. The recipes of these and other classic dishes are surveyed in the article on traditional Ottoman dishes.