[Sca-cooks] Turkish delight

[David Friedman]

Your palude sounds as though it might be related to al-Warraq's faludhaj 
and khabis recipes. Chapters 93 and 94. Except that those have some sort 
of fat as well as sugar or honey and starch.


On 2/1/14, 12:12 PM, lilinah at earthlink.net wrote:
> Thea wrote:
>> Thanks everyone. I was assuming that pre-cornstarch they would have used
>> gelatin as a gelling agent. I didn't think of other powdered starches.
> This is what Europeans thought for centuries, since outside of a few rare medieval recipes wheat starch was not used in cooking. Hans Dernschwam in 1553 called it "strong flour" since there was no German word for it. In the 18th century wheat starch was known as "hair powder", since its only use was for powdering wigs. By the 19th it was used for stiffening linen and eventually returned to uses in cuisine.
>
> Johnna wrote:
>> I can't get to my copies but Mary Isin's books would be excellent sources on
>> the history.
>> Sherbet and Spice: The Complete Story of Turkish Sweets and Desserts,
>> London: I.B. Tauris, came out last year.
> I managed to get to mine, i have it right here --->
> BTW, the "s" in her name has a cedilla under it, indicating it is pronounced like "sh" in English, and the capital "I" has a dot over it, so her last name is "ee-sheen".
>
> Bear wrote:
>> Turkish delight is generally attributed to the Turkish confectioner, Hadji
>> Bekir, who introduced the confection in Constatinople in the 18th Century.
>> Not exactly before 1492 (or 1600) either.
> It first appears as Lokum in the 18th c., but Haci Bekir popularized Turkish Delight but was not the inventor, according to Mary Isin. ("c" in modern Turkish orthography is pronounced like "j" in English).
>
> David Friedman wrote:
>> I believe that helva/halva is a general Arabic term for sweets. The
>> medieval Islamic cookbooks have a fair number of different such
>> recipes--my favorite is a candy rather like divinity--and presumably the
>> modern Halvah and the Indian Halwa are descendants of the same name.
> It is an Arabic word adopted by the Ottomans, as well, as a general term for sweets.
>
> Now, on to Turkish Delight. According to Mary Isin, it appears to have to have descended from palude (a 3-syllable word - pah-lu-deh) or paluze (related to the Arabic word "faludhaj), also known as pelte (2-syllables, pel-teh), a gummy sweet served in bowls, made from starch and honey or sugar. Shirvani includes two paluze recipes in his mid-15th c. manuscript. One is made of honey, (wheat) starch, some blanched, thinly sliced ​​almonds, and rosewater syrup (gullab / julab). The second is made of honey, starch, sumac soaked in water and strained - the juice is used, rosewater syrup, and almonds. He adds, "It is also nice made with cornelians."
>
> By the 17th c. pelte was also known as rahatu'l-hulkum, meaning "ease the throat", a phrase used by pelte makers to attract customers. In the 19th c. rahatu'l-hulkum was "corrupted", as Mary Isin says, and went through several permutations and contractions, ending up as "lokum". The first recorded use of the term "Turkish Delight" dates to the 1870s, in the memoirs of the Englishwoman E.C.C. Baillie. However it was more commonly known in English as "lumps of delight".
>
> Friedrich Unger published his recipes in 1838, in German, after spending a good deal of time studying Ottoman sweets of the time. He was the first foreigner to record accurately how Lokum was made. Europeans continued to assume it was made with gelatin or isinglass.
>
> One of the tricks of achieving the proper consistency and appearance is that the starch and sugar or honey or pekmez (concentrated grape syrup/molasses) are cooked slowly, stirring constantly without stopping and in the same direction with a wooden confectioner's paddle, for 2 or 3 hours on a low fire. Obviously one man couldn't do this alone, so there was a small team who took turns. If it wasn't done properly the sugar in it would crystallize, ruining it.
>
> When it was done, it was poured into wooden molds, which in 1901 were 40 cm. long and 25 cm. wide and 4 cm. deep, as described by Pretextat Lecomte, who published his work in French. The molds had been powdered with finely powdered sugar to prevent sticking. After it had cooled it was turned onto a marble slab, cut into strips about 3 cm wide, which were quickly cut into cubes and covered again with powdered sugar.
>
> Nuts were stirred into the paste after the cooking was complete, then it was poured into the molds. Pretextat Lecomtes said skill is everything in preparing lokum. No amount of written explanation can take the place of experience.
>
> In the late 18th c. it was flavored with musk, the most highly esteemed flavor, which was both stirred into the paste and added to the powdered sugar. The second best flavor was rosewater. In 1844 it might contain both musk and rosewater. In the summer of 1835 Friedrich Unger collected recipes for lokum with almonds, or with pistachios and musk, or with rosewater, noting that the kind with pistachios and musk was the best liked in the royal palace.
>
> By 1882, Ayse (s-cedilla) Fahriye published recipes in Turkish for lokum with musk and rosewater, with clotted cream (kaymak), with almonds, or with pistachios. By the early 20th c. Hadiye Fahriye published recipes for 8 varieties: plain, mastic (which was powdered and added at the end of cooking), kaymak, almond, pine nut, pistachio, hazelnut, and "double cooked" [i don't know what that means], and also noted that any flavor desired could be made by adding essences or syrups, such as violet, lemon, or bitter orange.
>
> Mary Isin notes that as late as 1928 English recipes for Turkish Delight specified gelatin as the thickening agent.
>
> There's much more information in Isin, but i will stop here.
>
> Urtatim (that's oor-tah-TEEM)
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-- 
David Friedman
www.daviddfriedman.com
http://daviddfriedman.blogspot.com/