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The story of the creation of Turkish
Delight (lokum) begins in
the late 1700s, when Ali Muhiddin
Haci Bekir,
confectioner to the imperial court
in Istanbul,
listens to the sultan rant:
"Hard candy! I'm
tired of hard candy!" the sultan
growled as he cracked a tooth
on yet another
sourball. "I demand soft candy!"
Ali Muhiddin Haci Bekir
had come to the imperial capital of Istanbul from
the Anatolian mountain
town of Kastamonu in the late
1700s to hear his emperor's plea.
His
mountain-man blood rose! His face turned
grim with conviction! He set
his jaw with determination! He was going to
take bold and decisive action!
He marched into his confectioner's
kitchen and thought up a recipe: he
mixed water, sugar, corn starch, cream
of
tartar
and rosewater,
cooked it up, poured the mixture into
a flat pan slicked with almond oil,
and let it cool. Then he sprinkled
it with powdered sugar, cut it into
bite-sized chunks and...his hand trembling,
his eyes bright with anticipation,
his mind fraught with trepidation,
his lips quivering to receive the morsel...he bit!
What? No crack of candy
crunched by his mighty alpine jaws?
No shower of sugary splinters scattering
through his oral cavity? Why, this
new confection was soft and easy
to chew, a pleasure, a treat for
both palate and teeth! It was... it
was...a comfortable morsel!
Rahat lokum ("comfortable
morsel"), nowadays called
simply lokum, or Turkish
Delight, was an instant hit,
especially at the palace. Ali Muhiddin
became a celebrity overnight as palace
bigwhigs (or, more usually, their
lackeys and gofers) traipsed down
the hill from Topkapi
Palace to Eminönü on
the Golden
Horn to buy boxes of Comfortable
Morsels to thrill the jaded palates
of Ottoman potentates.
You can still buy lokum at Ali
Muhiddin's shop in Eminönü today,
almost 250 years since the intrepid
confectioner saved his sultan from
sourballs. It's on Hamidiye Caddesi
at the corner of Seyhülislam
Hayri Efendi Caddesi, two blocks
east of the Yeni Cami (New
Mosque).
Over the centuries Ali Muhiddin's
descendants (the shop is still owned
by the family) fiddled with the recipe,
adding good things like walnuts,
pistachios, oranges, almonds, clotted
cream, and of course chocolate.
(The plain rosewater original
is still a favorite, however.)
Lokum (Turkish Delight) is
now made and sold in thousands of shops
throughout Turkey, and enjoyed with Turkish
tea or coffee,
or just by itself. A favorite place
to buy it is Afyon,
where the rich local clotted cream is
used to make kaymakli lokum.
You can make your own Turkish
Delight at home. Here's a recipe.
When you visit a shop, don't be afraid
to ask for a free sample: say Deneyelim! (deh-neh-yeh-LEEM, "Let's
try some!") (For more Turkish
words and phrases, see my Turkish
Language Guide.)
Recipe to Make Turkish Delight
Turkish
Food and Drink
Travel
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