Traditional Ottoman Dishes: Kebabs, Pilav, Baklava, Mantı, and More

The Ottoman kitchen produced one of the great cuisines of the early modern world. From the imperial kitchen at Topkapı to the taverns of the ports, from the iftar tables of Ramadan to the wedding feasts of the countryside, the dishes of the Ottoman tradition are still eaten across the Middle East, the Balkans, and Turkey today. The structural account is in the article on Ottoman cuisine; this one is a catalog, with the named varieties, the principal ingredients, and a short history of each. Priscilla Mary Işın’s Bountiful Empire (2018) is the standard English reference, and I have used it freely; the earlier Mary Işın, Ottoman Culinary Culture (2015), has the long view of the cookbook tradition.

Key dates

1453 — The fall of Constantinople and the consolidation of the imperial kitchen; the Matbah-ı Âmire takes shape.
1473 — First attestation of the word baklava in Ottoman Turkish, in the palace accounts of Mehmed II.
c. 1599 — Mustafa Âli’s Mevaidü’n-Nefais fixes the Ottoman menu in print.
c. 1650 — Evliya Çelebi’s Seyahatname records the names and varieties of dishes from Bursa to Cairo.
1764 — The Melceü’t-Tabbâhîn of Karahisari: the first cookbook to give a recipe for imam bayıldı in its modern form.
19th c. — The döner kebab and the İskender kebab take their modern Bursa form.
c. 2013 — Turkish registration of Antep baklavası and Kayseri mantısı in the EU geographical indications scheme.

Pilav

The pilav — the rice dish — was the central staple of the Ottoman kitchen. The most common forms were the plain pilav of rice, butter, and stock; the şehriyeli pilav of rice and orzo; the fıstıklı pilav of rice and pistachio; the sütlü pilav of rice, milk, and sugar, served as a dessert; the zerdeli pilav of rice, currants, and pine nuts, served with kebab; and the perde pilavı, a baked pilav of rice, chicken, almonds, and currants served in a sealed pastry shell. The palace used the long-grained rice of the Meriç river, of Edirne, or of the Nile delta. The Ottoman cook distinguished sharply between the Osmanlı pilavı, a dressed pilav with currants and pine nuts served with the kebab, and the simpler pilav of the country kitchen; both are still made in Turkish houses today, and the Osmanlı pilavı is the rice dish of the modern Turkish festive table.

Key ingredients: long-grain rice, butter, stock or water, salt; the dressed variants add şehriye (orzo), pistachio, currants, pine nuts, or chicken.

Kebab

The kebab was the principal meat dish. The most common forms were the şiş kebab (skewered, grilled lamb), the döner kebab (vertically roasted, shaved meat), the Adana kebab (long, hand-minced, spiced kebab on a flat iron skewer), the Urfa kebab (the milder version), the Beyti kebab (hand-minced, spiced, grilled and wrapped in flatbread with yogurt), the İskender kebab (thinly sliced grilled lamb on flatbread with tomato sauce and yogurt, the late-19th-century Bursa invention of İskender Efendi), the tandır kebabı (clay-oven-roasted lamb), and the testi kebabı (sealed-clay-pot kebab of Cappadocia). The most common meat was lamb or mutton, and the kebab was generally served with a pilav, a salad, a yogurt dip, a spicy pepper paste, and a flatbread.

The standard form of the döner kebab as we know it — meat roasted on a vertical spit and shaved off in slices — is a 19th-century Bursa invention, and İskender Efendi of Bursa is generally credited with the dish that bears his name. Earlier similar dishes exist, but the modern vertical-spit döner is a 19th-century form, and Priscilla Mary Işın has traced the etymology of the word to the 17th-century Ottoman döner kebap of the Melceü’t-Tabbâhîn — a horizontal spit-roasted dish of different shape but related name.

Key ingredients: lamb or mutton, sumac, Aleppo pepper, minced onion, parsley, yogurt, flatbread, tomato, butter, and (for İskender) tomato paste.

Börek

The börek was the principal pastry. It was made of thin sheets of filo pastry filled with cheese, minced meat, spinach, or potatoes, and baked on a hot plate or in a tin oven. The most common forms were the su böreği (boiled and baked, with a cheese filling), the sigara böreği (small, cigar-shaped, of feta and parsley), the kol böreği (rolled, with cheese), the gül böreği (rose-shaped, with cheese), the peynirli börek of the villages, and the kıymalı börek (minced-meat börek). The palace produced a particularly elaborate börek for the sünnet düğünü, the circumcision feast, in which dozens of varieties were prepared and stacked in the form of an artificial mountain.

Key ingredients: filo (yufka) pastry, white cheese (beyaz peynir) or feta, parsley, minced lamb, spinach, egg, butter, and (for su böreği) a light milk-and-egg binder.

İmam bayıldı

The imam bayıldı — literally, “the imam fainted” — is a whole baby eggplant slowly stewed in olive oil with onion, garlic, tomato, and parsley. It is one of the great vegetarian dishes of the eastern Mediterranean, and the only dish in the Ottoman repertoire whose name is a story. The most common version of the story, recorded in the 19th-century Ottoman cookbooks but probably older, runs: an imam married the daughter of a wealthy household, and his bride served him an eggplant dish of such richness that he fainted at the table. The dish exists in a number of variants — with or without meat, with or without tomato — and the name has been variously explained as the reaction of an imam to a particularly fine first marriage or, more darkly, to a particularly lavish dish that he had been told was an ordinary one. Priscilla Mary Işın treats the dish in Bountiful Empire and notes that the 1764 Melceü’t-Tabbâhîn of Karahisari already gives the recipe in its modern form. The name is, in my view, the dish’s most distinctive feature: an Ottoman dish named for a man who fainted is unusual, and it suggests the long reach of the Sufi tradition in the everyday kitchen.

Key ingredients: small eggplants, olive oil, onion, garlic, tomato, parsley, sugar, salt.

Dolma and sarma

The dolma — the stuffed dish — was another major category. The most common forms were the dolma (stuffed bell pepper, tomato, zucchini, eggplant, or onion, filled with a pilav of rice, minced meat, onion, and pine nuts), the sarma (stuffed vine leaf, cabbage leaf, or chard leaf), the karışık dolma (mixed stuffed dish served cold with a yogurt sauce), the çiğ köfte (raw-meat bulgur dish of the southeastern provinces, generally vegetarian in the modern form), and the içli köfte (bulgur-and-mince shell stuffed with a minced-meat filling). The signature vegetarian variant of the dolma is the imam bayıldı (above). The dolma family is, in practical terms, a single dish in many wrappings; the sar-ma is the rolled form (vine leaves, cabbage), the dol-ma the stuffed form (peppers, tomatoes, zucchini).

Key ingredients: small eggplants, bell peppers, vine or cabbage leaves, rice, minced onion, pine nuts, currants, olive oil, parsley, dill, mint, lemon, and (for meat dolma) minced lamb; for çiğ köfte, fine bulgur, tomato paste, isot pepper, and parsley.

Mantı

The mantı — small dumplings, generally of a thin pasta wrapper enclosing a filling of minced lamb or beef — is the Ottoman adaptation of the Central Asian manti brought westward by the Turkic peoples. The most famous version is the Kayseri mantısı, the tiny dumpling of Kayseri, served with garlic-yogurt sauce and a drizzle of melted butter and paprika. The Kayseri mantı is a distinct form: the dumplings are smaller than a fingernail, served in yogurt, and the standard joke is that the cook’s skill is measured by the number of dumplings that fit in a spoon (forty, in the canonical version, for a single mouthful). The dish spread through the Ottoman Balkans and is the ancestor of the mantı of the Bosniaks, the manti of the Crimean Tatars, and the pelmeni of the Russian kitchen; the Central Asian manti is a much larger steamed dumpling, and the Kayseri form is a specifically Ottoman refinement. The Kayseri mantısı is now a registered geographical indication in the EU scheme, and the Kayseri cooks have made it a point of local pride.

Key ingredients: thin pasta dough (flour, egg, water, salt), minced lamb, finely chopped onion, sumac, pepper; for the sauce, yogurt, garlic, dried mint, melted butter, and Aleppo pepper or paprika.

Baklava

The baklava — the layered pastry of phyllo, nuts, and syrup — is the most famous Ottoman sweet, and probably the most famous dish of the entire Ottoman repertoire. The word baklava is attested in Ottoman Turkish in the palace accounts of Mehmed II in 1473, and the dish is described in detail in the 16th-century palace cookbooks. The palace form, the saray baklavası, uses forty sheets of phyllo and a heavy syrup of sugar, lemon, and rose water; the most prized modern variant is the fıstıklı baklava of Gaziantep, made with pistachio from the Antep region. The other classical forms include the burma baklava (rolled into a tube), the havuç dilimi (cut into a long lozenge), the fıstıklı (with pistachio), and the cevizli (with walnut). The Gaziantep claim on the pistachio baklava is now a registered EU geographical indication, and the dispute with other regions (the Kayseri walnut baklava, the Damascus pistachio baklava) is part of the long story of the dish. The standard Antep baklavası is served in small diamond or rectangle cuts, with a heavy pistachio filling of green or pale green pistachio, and a syrup that does not dominate the nut. I find the Gaziantep version, eaten within a day of cutting, the best of the modern forms; the long-keeping commercial versions, which are the standard in Istanbul and in the diaspora, are a different thing.

Key ingredients: phyllo (yufka) pastry, pistachio (for Antep baklavası) or walnut, clarified butter, sugar syrup with lemon, and (for some forms) a little rose water or mastic.

Köfte, çorba, and the everyday kitchen

The köfte — the meatball — was another major form. The most common varieties were the köfte itself (small, hand-shaped meatball of minced meat, onion, and spices), the sulu köfte (meatball in sauce), the ızgara köfte (grilled meatball), and the kadınbudu köfte (the woman’s-thigh meatball, made with rice and parsley). The çorba was the daily starter of the meal, and the most common varieties were the mercimek çorbası (lentil soup), the yayla çorbası (yogurt soup), the işkembe çorbası (tripe soup), and the tarhana çorbası (fermented-yogurt-and-tomato soup). The ekmek — the flatbread of the neighborhood oven — was the daily staple.

Key ingredients (köfte): minced lamb or beef, grated onion, breadcrumbs, egg, parsley, cumin, salt, and pepper. For çorba: red lentils and mint (mercimek), yogurt and rice (yayla), tripe and garlic (işkembe), or fermented tarhana dough and tomato (tarhana).

Salads and meze

The salad was an important part of the meal, and the meze — the small plates of cold food — was a major feature of the meyhane, the tavern. The most common salads and dips were the çoban salatası (shepherd’s salad of tomato, cucumber, onion, and parsley), the patlıcan salatası (eggplant salad), the acılı ezme (spicy pepper paste), the haydari (yogurt-and-cucumber dip), the tarator (yogurt-and-walnut dip), the humus (chickpea-and-tahini dip), and the babagannuç (charred-eggplant dip). The principal meze of the tavern were the beyaz peynir (white cheese), the kaşar peyniri (yellow cheese), the zeytin (olive), and a great deal of salad and dip of the cold kitchen.

Key ingredients: tomato, cucumber, onion, parsley, sumac, olive oil, lemon; for dips, strained yogurt, garlic, crushed walnuts, tahini, charred eggplant, isot or Aleppo pepper, and mint.

Sweets

The sweet tradition is a defining element of the Ottoman repertoire. The most famous is the baklava (above). The other palace sweets include the künefe (a cheese pastry soaked in syrup, an Ottoman sweet of the southern provinces), the milk desserts — sütlaç (rice pudding), kazandibi (caramelized rice pudding), tavuk göğsü (chicken-breast pudding, thickened with rice flour and sugar), muhallebi (milk pudding), keşkül (almond pudding), and güllaç (rose-water and starch dessert of Ramadan) — the helvalar (the dense, sweet puddings of flour, butter, and sugar), the lokum (Turkish delight), and the akide şekeri (rock candy). The recipes for these and other palace dishes are preserved in the Ottoman cuisine tradition and its surviving cookbooks.

Key ingredients: for the milk desserts, milk, rice or rice flour, sugar, mastic, rose water, and (for tavuk göğsü) shredded chicken breast; for lokum, starch, sugar, rose water, and pistachio; for helva, semolina or flour, butter, and sugar.

Beverages

The principal beverages of the Ottoman kitchen were su (water), şerbet (sweet fruit, flower, or spice drink, with rose, tamarind, sour cherry, and licorice the most popular flavors), ayran (salted yogurt drink), boza (fermented millet drink, served in winter), salep (hot drink of orchid flour, milk, sugar, and cinnamon), kahve (coffee, central to Ottoman social life), çay (black tea, common only in the late 19th and 20th centuries), şarap (wine), and raki (anise-flavored grape spirit). The article on Ottoman coffee culture treats the arrival, the spread, and the social role of coffee in more detail.

Key ingredients (for a kitchen perspective): for şerbet, fruit or flower (rose, tamarind, sour cherry) boiled with sugar, with lemon or vinegar; for ayran, yogurt, water, and salt; for boza, fermented millet with sugar and cinnamon; for salep, orchid root flour, milk, sugar, and cinnamon; for kahve, finely ground roasted arabica beans boiled in a cezve with water and sugar; for raki, twice-distilled grape spirit flavored with anise.