The story behind Turkish Delight

http://www.bbc.com/travel/story/20181003-the-secret-story-behind-turkish-delight

by diminish • 8 years ago

80 61 8 years ago

crooked-v• 8 years ago

C. S. Lewis's greatest crime was tricking innumerable children into thinking they'd like Turkish Delight.

hnhg• 8 years ago

Like chocolate, bad turkish delight is a crime, but the good stuff is amazing. The stuff I've liked the most hasn't been from Turkey though.

barry-cotter• 8 years ago

Down with Hershey's chocolate flavoured dairy product!

netcan• 8 years ago

Yup. lol.

I wanted turkish delight for years until finally spotting the Cadbury's turkish delight bar. Did not like it :)

I like it well enough now, but as a kid the consistency really turned me off. Also, that bar isn't really turkish delight.

aarong11• 8 years ago

Yeah, the Carbury's stuff really is a far cry from real Turkish delight. It's like comparing Haribo strawberries to real strawberries.

NeedMoreTea• 8 years ago

No, Turkish Delight is wonderful. The crime is the monstrosity Cadbury call Turkish Delight.

aoki• 8 years ago

As a kid growing up in the US, I liked “Aplets and Cotlets” a lot, so I could really empathize with Edmund. I suppose that if my parents had given us rose or bergamot lokum it would have been a very different story.

samatman• 8 years ago

It's funny, I adore rosewater and pine Turkish Delight, but think of Aplets and Cotlets as that weird, bad candy that comes with your rations in the Boy Scouts.

EnderMB• 8 years ago

I used to hate Turkish Delight until I bought my girlfriend some posh Turkish Delight for her birthday from Hotel Chocolat.

This stuff was basically pure Turkish Delight in powdered sugar, and it was lovely. It had a hint of lemon and rose, had a nice consistency, and while the sugar was annoying it was a lovely (albeit pricy) treat.

Her niece and nephew absolutely loved it too, and between the four of us the box didn't last too long. They weren't fans of the standard mass-produced chocolate one though. They thought it was too strong, and didn't like the fact that it was "like jelly".

m-i-l• 8 years ago

See also https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/cs-lewis-greatest-fict... and the HN comments:

- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10686217 (original post from 2015, 145 comments)

- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14563621 (repost from 2017, 125 comments)

manorie• 8 years ago

It is not easy to do it well, only ~5% of producers making it really enjoyable I can say. As a Turkish foodie with a Chef wife, Turkish Delight is not something we consume regularly. Unless it is very well done like the ones Haci Bekir produce. It's just a companion to Turkish Cofee most of the time. It's very easy to make a bad Turkish Delight. On 90% of my tastings, I don't even finish it, but Haci Bekir and some other shops are making it perfect which you do eat without coffee also.

vincentmarle2• 8 years ago

I have the same thing with baklava, 90% doesn’t taste good but you always keep looking for the 10% that does. Whenever baklava is on the menu, I need to try it, but none of the fancy restaurants I’ve been to in the US do it really well (the $4 per piece ones), but the cheap corner store on Post & Powell in SF surprisingly has one of the best (and they get it from some bakery in Oakland but refuse to tell me which one).

therein2• 8 years ago

Totally agreed when it comes to baklava. I never had it done right in the US, and definitely not in the Bay Area. The best Turkish food I had was in Kirkland, WA and the best baklava I had was in Turkey at Gulluoglu.

Broken_Hippo2• 8 years ago

I have the fotunate/unfortunate experience of growing up eating home-made baklava. I grew up going to an Eastern Orthodox church and most of the congregation was either immigrants or descendants of immigrants (including myself, great-grandmother was from Syria, along with some of my grandmother's siblings. My grandmother happened to be born in the US).

I used to find most of it disappointing at best. My tastes have loosened up quite a bit since then because not only did I give up church, but I'm far removed from the area now.

hobs• 8 years ago

Not always possible, but baklava is pretty easy to make and stores really well (since you want it cooled first anyway.)

I have the same fixation with galaktoboureko (so many semolinas that are not grainy enough) but hardly anyone serves it :(

tekacs2• 8 years ago

If you see this - which corner store on Post & Powell?

Maybe it should be obvious, but I couldn't figure it out. :)

kieckerjan• 8 years ago

If you have a pointer to a good recipe, I would be, well, delighted!

kweks2• 8 years ago

There are two typical ways to make Turkish delight. One is the "easy western" way - sugar, rosewater, gelatin. This is obviously not halal. The second is the "hard authentic" way: sugar, rosewater, cornflower.

Cooking confectionery is a real trial. For Turkish delight, you heat a large amount of sugar for a very long time making it hover between a very tight temperature tolerance. If you go over you make toffee, if you go under you make caramel. After a few hours, you mix in the cornflour slurry, mix for a few more hours, and then pour to set.

In my experience, your cornflour lumps (three hours wasted), the temperature spikes or drops (fail), sticks (fail) or you get hot sticky napalm on extremities.

However, if you pull it off it is delightful, and your Turkish friends will be very impressed!

mlevental• 8 years ago

I'm going to be in Istanbul in 3 weeks for the first time. can you tell me where I could buy some please

nl• 8 years ago

Perhaps read the article?

makmanalp4• 8 years ago

Ali Muhiddin Haci Bekir in Sirkeci is the defacto choice - their store still looks exactly the way it must have looked in the early 1900s. Cafer Erol in Kadikoy has a very nice storefront and a LOT of variety, and pretty decent hard candy ("akide") too. Divan is more of a western patisserie and has many locations, but good. Cemilzade is the off-beat version of Haci Bekir, also in Kadikoy. A lot of options: pomegrenate, saffron, twice baked, clotted cream ("kaymak"), coffee, coconut, pistachio, almost any fruit imaginable etc etc.

Just don't get the boxed stuff, and get a lot of variety of flavors. Also I seem to be the only person who hates the rosewater, but maybe that's just me.

For baklava, it's really a labor of love and there's a lot of great old and small shops. Gulluoglu used to be great and is still quite OK, but feels a but mass produced now. Smaller options are Köşkeroğlu, kafadaroğlu etc, but I don't know if it's worth seeking out especially - just duck into whatever small shop that seems busy during the day.

Probably what might be a better experience is trying /unfamiliar/ desserts: Kunefe is crispy shredded puff pastry with cheese in it, doused in syrup, served HOT with pistachio on top. Tulumba is the turkish take on churros. Halva is made of tahini and sugar, and is getting more popular in the US. Kazandibi is pudding that's been caramelized / burnt at the "bottom of the pan" - traditionally the gelatin in it comes from chicken breast (you can't taste it). More often it's now the "fake" version, still delicious. Lokma is turkish fried dough. Kabak tatlisi is made of pumpkin. There's so much to try, just get the stuff which you don't know what it is.

One thing to remember is that Turkish sweets are quite sweet - you're only meant to have one small piece. Of course that won't stop many of us from getting a whole plate :-) Usually you can ask for a half portion at a shop.

Finally if you're near Kadikoy, hit up Ciya too - regional foods from across Turkey that you can't find in many other places.

Hope you enjoy your trip!

pow_pp_-1_v2• 8 years ago

I like Turkish food a lot too. Do you have suggestions/tips/pointer on where to get good Turkish food; authentic recipes etc.? Thanks!

makmanalp4• 8 years ago

Hey! Unfortunately it's a bit hard to find English resources - both in the sense that there aren't many to begin with but also the books are difficult to get hold of.

Classical Turkish Cooking by Ayla Algar is, well, a classic. People often think the recipes aren't descriptive enough. But also it's quite comprehensive and has a lot of history too.

Aegean Flavors by chef Didem Senol is a wonderful take on aegean cuisine in Turkey - highly related to greek food.

Oklava by chef Selin Kiazim is a bit more of a modern / upscale restaurant take - she runs one.

Claudia Roden's book is not only about Turkey but quite great.

Hope this helps!

cik2• 8 years ago

Exactly this. Many of the foods we get outside of our cultural norms, just don't compare to the real thing - which in turn drives people to dislike the real deal.

There's an enormous difference between the Turkish Delight sold in the grocery stores here, versus Haci Bekir. The same is true of the Arak I buy and the jahnoun. Lord what I wouldn't give for real jahnoun - the frozen stuff is such shite.

Jolter• 8 years ago

So did anyone manage to glean what the "secret story" was?

Loughla• 8 years ago

A way to get people to click on the article based solely on the title. Like a kind of bait to drive clicks. Weird.

swrobel• 8 years ago

I still don't know what Turkish Delight even is after reading

jschwartzi4• 8 years ago

There is a shop in Turkey which originated the recipe for Turkish Delight. They're still open.

Graham24• 8 years ago

being English, every Christmas there was always a box of Turkish Delight on the table (and dates of course).

jschwartzi4• 8 years ago

I love dates, especially ones that have not been pitted because they retain a lot more softness. Pitted dates are an abomination.

asdr• 8 years ago

Putting all aside, I don't know who came up with but what a terrible name for a dessert; and why do you change its original name in the first place?

modernerd• 8 years ago

Maybe I've not had great Turkish Delight, but my reaction to it was the same as this person's:

“I tried Turkish Delight and it was good but not ‘sell out my family to the White Witch‘ good.”

Source: https://twitter.com/missmfair/status/585582845554532353

Ref: https://www.tor.com/2016/08/08/why-was-turkish-delight-the-u...

orev2• 8 years ago

Given the “old world” nature of it, I have to think that it’s one of those things that was really amazing at the time, but just can’t compare to modern sweets, so you can’t really get a good perspective on it. Like if you had watched a movie like Guardians of the Galaxy before ever seeing Star Wars, you’d wonder what the big deal was about Star Wars.

makmanalp4• 8 years ago

I think also people severely underestimate how bland and repetitive the average person's diet used to be at the turn of the century, before food engineering and junk food. Meat and sweets were a luxury in a lot of places. Haute cuisine was reserved for the richest.

jschwartzi4• 8 years ago

In the same token there are a lot of modern sweets that I find to be overly sweet. For example a lot of the Starbucks sweet coffee drinks are so sweet that they make me gag.

I find most modern sweet things to be disgustingly sweet, but Turkish Delight is one of the few sweets that I really like because it's not overwhelmingly sweet.

tcgv• 8 years ago

"one of those things that was really amazing at the time, but just can’t compare to modern sweets"

Taste is subjective/cultural. I visited Istanbul early this year and brought back home (to São Paulo, Brazil) some boxes of Turkish Delight, several flavors, and they run out really fast with family and friends. Everyone loved it.

Personally I'm not a fan of modern overly sweet treats.

aaroninsf• 8 years ago

I read somewhere (can't recall where) that the fact that it's not that good was exactly why CS Lewis chose it. Even in his time it was considered "meh."

The notion being that people need little motivation to sell out.

nanomonkey• 8 years ago

The book was also set during the Second World War where sugar was rationed in England. I'm sure any sweets would have been highly prized by children.

Celarnor• 8 years ago

For a good ten years or so, I thought Turkish Delight was a fictitious candy brand C.S. Lewis made up for the Narnia books.

The story behind Turkish Delight

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