Between the 14th
and 20th centuries, the Ottoman Empire
ruled vast swathes of Western Asia, Southeast
Europe, and North Africa. Ottoman sultans lived lives
of luxury and extravagance, and they loved to eat. Food was a big deal to the
rulers of the Ottoman Empire. Sultans stocked their
kitchens with exotic spices and ingredients
imported from all across their massive empire, as
well as from trading partners like China and Persia. Today, we're going
to take a look at how a sultan in the
Ottoman Empire dined. But before we get started, be
sure to subscribe to the Weird History channel, and let
us know in the comments below what culinary history
you would like to hear about. OK, so let's talk turkey. Before we get to
the specifics, you should know that the
Ottoman sultans weren't big on sharing their
culinary secrets with the rest of the world. For this reason,
imperial cooks were forbidden from writing
down their recipes. Some of these dishes, like
baklava and Turkish coffee, are still popular mainstays
of Turkish cuisine. But some were lost,
and others have been difficult to reconstruct. Despite the sultan's
best efforts at secrecy, some of their favorite
foods and beverages are now commonly known. Many could even still be found
on the streets of Istanbul today, over a century after
the fall of the empire. Imagine being rich
enough to have your own confectionery
kitchen that would make treats for you on command. The Ottoman sultans
had such Kitchens, and they specialized in
making jams, juices, syrups, and sweets. The most famous and luxurious
of which was baklava. Baklava dates back
thousands of years, all the way to ancient
Assyria, but it was the 15th century Ottomans
who perfected the recipe. The oldest known
references to the dessert came from notebooks
written in the kitchen of Topkapi Palace in 1473. Over the subsequent
years, baklava would evolve from a
relatively simple pastry to an elaborate and
time consuming dessert made from paper thin pastry
layered with honey and nuts. It requires great
skill to make, which met the dish was expensive. That being the case, baklava was
considered a wealthy person's luxury well into
the 19th century. It was so ingrained
that even today Turks still use the expression
"I'm not rich enough to eat baklava every day." Kebab goes way back. Ancient legends tell of
brave Turkish warriors who would eat grilled meat
off the blade of their sabers. Sultans have been
known to enjoy it, including Sultan Abdulaziz,
who apparently ordered takeout kebab from a well-known
kebab house near his country lodge during the 19th century. Huh, and you thought drive-thru
was a modern invention. Today, the most
famous Turkish kebab is doner kebab, which is
also known as doner kebab. Likely developed sometime
in the 19th century, this type of kebab is
grilled meat shaved off a vertical rotisserie. The Ottomans would have eaten
the meat like Arab shawarma or a Greek euro which,
incidentally, are both derived from doner kebab. The Turkish relationship with
coffee has shifted quite a bit over the years. A governor from Yemen introduced
the drink to Sultan Suleiman in the 16th century. He was quite fond of it. And the thick, bitter
beverage became wildly popular in Istanbul
and all across the empire. However, in the 17th
century Sultan Murad IV declared coffee
an indecent drink. The beverage was
outlawed, and anyone found drinking it would face
beheading, which still might be just about the
only thing that could get coffee drinkers
to reconsider their habit. It's tough to be an addict. Turkish coffee is
made from ground beans boiled in a brass pot. It packs a dense punch and has
a distinct consistency and taste that the country
is quite proud of. One cafe in Istanbul even
brags that its coffee is so thick even a water
Buffalo wouldn't sink in it. Well, that sounds too thick. While there is evidence
that Ottomans drank tea as early as 400 BC, the beverage
didn't become common in Turkey until the 1900s. They originally learned
of tea from China and named it Chai,
spelled C-A-Y, after the Chinese word for tea. The late 19th century Ottomans
tried to grow their own tea, but they picked an area
of the country that wasn't well suited for it. So the crop didn't take off. However, by the
early 20th century Turkey was using
imported seeds to create nurseries that thrived. Today, the country produces
hundreds of thousands of tons of tea, which is their
second most consumed drink after water. The Ottomans made their tea
using a multilayered pot called a samovar to boil water. This would create a
highly concentrated drink that could be diluted to taste
by adding additional water. Modern Turks tend
to take their tea with cubes of beet sugar, which
sweetens the intense flavor. They must like it because Turkey
is the sixth largest producer of tea in the world today. To most modern people,
sherbet is a frozen desert made by adding fruit juice
to milk, cream, or gelatin. But to the Ottomans, it was
a sweet refreshing drink. Made from mixing crushed fruit
with various flowers and herbs, sherbet could be enjoyed
both before and during meals. Ottoman sherbet could be
made a number of ways, but at least one
recipe recommended combining iced spring water with
a syrup made from pear, quince, peach, apple, and apricot. In the 17th century,
England started making their own from
sherbet powders imported from the Ottoman Empire. Because Ottomans might mix
the surf with water, ice, or even snow, the
word "sherbet," which derived from a word
that meant "to drink," was often translated
into English as "syrup." Historians disagree on
whether borek was originally created in Turkey
or somewhere else in the eastern Mediterranean. Whatever the case, it was a
favorite of the Ottoman sultans since the days of Mehmed The
Conqueror in the 15th century. A flaky, savory
pastry which comes in different shapes,
like squares, triangles, and crescents and might
be filled with ingredients like cheese, vegetables,
or lamb, borek still remains popular today. However, the dish dishes changed
quite a bit over the years. The borek Mehmed enjoyed was
likely stuffed with chicken. Later, sultans would
have eaten borek stuffed with rare, imported ingredients
like chestnuts, dried apricots, dates, and minced
meat, as was the case during the diplomatic
banquet in 1649. Salep has a warm milky drink
made from ground orchids. The main ingredient in
the drink was salep flour, which was made by grinding
up the dried roots of wild Anatolian
Mountain orchids. This flower, which
was believed to have the properties of
an aphrodisiac, would then be mixed with
rosewater, milk, and sugar to create a sweet
delicious treat which the Ottomans
absolutely loved. The drink remains so incredibly
popular in Turkey today the nation actually saw
an appreciable decline in the population
of wild orchids and had to pass laws
forbidding its export. Pilaf is a rice dish containing
vegetables, meats, and spices that's cooked in a broth. Turkish pilaf, for
example, was frequently cooked with mutton stock. While there are many
varieties of Turkish pilaf, they are all cooked so
that the rice ideally doesn't stick at all
and could potentially fall from the spoon
one grain at a time. Pilaf's history in Turkey can
be traced back to at least 1404 when the Turko-Mongolian
Emperor, Timur, served it at a banquet. By the 16th century,
rice pilaf with not only a staple of Ottoman
cuisine but was also wildly popular with
their frequent rivals in the Persian empire. A 17th century Ottoman traveler
in the Persian city of Tabriz recorded 40 different
kinds of pilaf. The city had been
occupied by the Ottomans several times in the past. Stuffed dishes were especially
popular with the Ottomans. In fact, an entire
subset of Ottoman cooking focused on dolma, which
are stuffed foods, and sarma, which
are wrapped foods. The love affair began way
back when the Turks conquered Constantinople in
1453, and Sultan Mehmed developed a taste for
vegetables stuffed with meat. While the sultan was the
first to take the dish, it quickly became popular. Vegetables commonly
used to make dolma include eggplants, onions,
tomatoes, zucchini, and peppers. Eventually, the Ottomans
also learned techniques for wrapping vegetables,
rice, and spices together in grape leaves. This dish was called sarma,
after its wrapping process. Bread was a staple
of Ottoman cuisine, and the Imperial
Palace was known to have its own bread ovens. Ottomans baked at least 46
different types of bread, including a popular
variety known as haz ekmek, which was
soft, white, and sprinkled with seeds. Recipes show that
Ottoman bakers often added fennel juice
to their dough, and Mehmed The Conqueror
was known to eat bread with melted animal fat. During the 15th
century, Ottomans would dip bread into a chickpea
spread flavored with currant, cinnamon, and pine nuts. Th is spread is believed to
be an ancestor of hummus. Boza is made by boiling
millet in water, then sieving it,
and adding sugar. It's not an Ottoman
drink and, in fact, predates them by centuries. However, the Ottoman Empire did
spread the drink to new places and drastically
increased its popularity. The drink had a
consistency like pudding and contained alcohol due to
the fermentation of the millet. It was because of
this alcohol content that Sultan Mehmed IV banned
boza during the 17th century-- a rule that wasn't terribly
popular or always respected. By the 19th century, a
non-alcoholic version of boza became popular, and Turks still
drink it today, especially in winter. Sultan's delight is another
name for "hunkar begendi," which translates to
"the ruler was pleased." It's made from stewed meat
on top of eggplant paste and, according to one
source, was introduced to Abdulaziz, the
32nd Ottoman sultan, by an African cook in
the mid-19th century. However, not everyone agrees. Other sources say the
dish was a specialty of Catholic cooks, who were
likely French or Italian and worked at the palace. Whatever the case,
the dish's name implies that, regardless of
who came up with the recipe, the sultan liked it. Another favorite of
the Ottoman sultans was roasted quince
stuffed with lamb. The dish, which combines the
crispiness of roasted fruit with a stuffing made from beef,
lamb, pine nuts, and currants, is very hard to find today. This is at least
partially because quince is fairly uncommon and
difficult to locate. Even the owner of an
Istanbul restaurant that specializes
in Ottoman foods reported having to bribe
fruit vendors in saving him quinces that were large enough
and smooth enough for the dish. Ayran is a salty yogurt drink
that long predates the Ottoman Empire. The drink, which was created
by mixing yogurt with water, dates back thousands of
years and was spread around by the Ottoman Empire as
they conquered the Near East. Sometimes consider the
national beverage of Turkey, Ayran is also popular in
Lebanon, Iran, and Greece. Combining the tartness
of yogurt with salt, ayran is typically seen as a
refreshing summertime drink and is still so popular in
Turkey today that you can buy it at a Turkish McDonald's. So what do you think? How does this
cuisine sound to you, and how would you
fare as a sultan? Let us know in the
comments below. And while you're
at it, check out some of these other videos
from our "Weird History."
