Cuisine

Turkish Cuisine

Middle Eastern and South Asian Cuisines

Turkish cuisine grew out of the Ottoman court kitchens of Istanbul and the Anatolian countryside, and it emphasizes lamb, eggplant, olives, yogurt and a strong culture of sharing food across many small dishes. Meze, an assortment of hot and cold small plates, opens many meals; dolma, vegetables or vine leaves stuffed with rice and often meat, and baklava, a rich pastry of phyllo dough layered with nuts and steeped in syrup, are among the dishes most associated with it, alongside Turkish coffee, brewed unfiltered in a small long-handled pot called a cezve. Ottoman court cuisine, refined over centuries in the kitchens of Topkapi Palace, spread its techniques and dishes across a former empire that once reached the Balkans, the Middle East and North Africa, which is part of why versions of the same dishes appear under different names across those regions today.

Facts

Signature Technique

Slow braising and grilling of lamb, extensive use of yogurt as a base and a sauce, and the unfiltered stovetop brewing of coffee in a cezve. 1

Origin Region

Anatolia and Istanbul, refined in Ottoman court kitchens and carried across the former Ottoman Empire into the Balkans, the Middle East and North Africa. 1

Learn More

A Palace Kitchen That Fed an Empire

This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.

Topkapi Palace in Istanbul once ran kitchens large enough to feed thousands of court staff, soldiers and visitors in a single day, and the techniques refined there over centuries did not stay behind palace walls. Ottoman court cooking systematized what had been Anatolian farmhouse ingredients, lamb, yogurt, eggplant, olives, rice and a wide vocabulary of stuffed and rolled vegetables, into a repertoire precise enough to be taught and repeated at scale, and then carried it outward across an empire that once stretched from the Balkans through the Middle East into North Africa. That is a large part of why a version of the same stuffed grape leaf turns up as Greek dolma, Bulgarian sarma and Levantine warak enab, each claimed as authentically local and each, in a real sense, correct to claim. Meze, the practice of opening a meal with many small hot and cold dishes rather than one large course, spread the same way, as did the technique of grilling and slow braising lamb until it falls apart. None of this makes the food any less genuinely Turkish today. It means Turkish cuisine did something few regional cuisines manage: it became an administrative technology as well as a culinary one, exported through governance rather than only through trade or migration, which is why its fingerprints show up in kitchens that never saw a single Ottoman soldier.

The Small Plates That Open Every Meal

This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.

Meze is not an appetizer course in the sense a European menu means it. It is a different way of structuring a meal entirely, built from many small hot and cold dishes eaten slowly, over conversation and usually over a drink, rather than moving briskly toward one main plate. A Turkish meze spread might set out yogurt-based dips, stuffed vine leaves, marinated vegetables, cheese, and small portions of grilled or fried seafood, with no dish required to be the centerpiece and every dish expected to be shared. The word and the practice are held in common across a wide swath of the former Ottoman world and the wider eastern Mediterranean, Greek, Cypriot, Lebanese and other regional versions all recognizable as the same idea, and that overlap is not a coincidence of naming: it reflects centuries of shared cooking practice across a region that traded and governed itself as one connected kitchen long before it was divided into separate national cuisines. What makes it worth pausing on is the underlying claim meze makes about eating well: that variety and pacing, many good small things over a long unhurried table, can be a more complete meal than any single ambitious dish.

Connections

Associated With

Greek Cuisine

Ottoman rule left Greek cuisine sharing several dishes, most visibly baklava and kataifi, with Turkish cuisine.

Source Greece: Daily Life and Social Customs (Encyclopaedia Britannica)

Turkish Coffee

Turkish coffee, brewed unfiltered in a cezve, is one of the cuisine signature drinks and carries UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage status.

Source Turkish Coffee Culture and Tradition (UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage, Nomination 00645)

Expresses Tradition

Halal (Islamic Dietary Law)

Mezze

Features Dish

Sarma

Source Stuffed leaves (Wikipedia)

Shashlik

Source Shashlik (Wikipedia)

Shish kofta

Source Shish kofta (Wikipedia)

Stuffed Peppers

Source Stuffed peppers (Wikipedia)

Stuffed Squash

Source Stuffed squash (Wikipedia)

Sulu köfte

Source Sulu köfte (source article)

Sütlü Nuriye

Source Sütlü Nuriye (Wikipedia)

Tatar böreği

Source Tatar böreği (Wikipedia)

Tavukgöğsü

Source Tavukgogsu (Wikipedia)

Tirit

Source Tirit (source article)

Yayla çorbası

Source Yayla çorbası (Wikipedia)

Showing 51 to 61 of 61 in Features Dish, page 2 of 2.

Long-Form Articles

A Palace Kitchen That Fed an Empire

The Small Plates That Open Every Meal

Uses Ingredient

Olive Oil

In the Other Atlases

Originated In

Anatolia

Also in Geography Atlas: where this subject originated.

Source Turkey (Turkiye): Cultural Life (Encyclopaedia Britannica)

The Balkans

Also in Geography Atlas: where this subject originated.

Source Turkey (Turkiye): Cultural Life (Encyclopaedia Britannica)

The Middle East

Also in Geography Atlas: where this subject originated.

Source Turkey (Turkiye): Cultural Life (Encyclopaedia Britannica)

The Ottoman Empire

Also in History Atlas: where this subject originated.

Source Turkey (Turkiye): Cultural Life (Encyclopaedia Britannica)

Sources

1. Turkey (Turkiye): Cultural Life (Encyclopaedia Britannica)

Encyclopaedia Britannica

Signature Technique: Slow braising and grilling of lamb, extensive use of yogurt as a base and a sauce, and the unfiltered stovetop brewing of coffee in a cezve.
Origin Region: Anatolia and Istanbul, refined in Ottoman court kitchens and carried across the former Ottoman Empire into the Balkans, the Middle East and North Africa.

Associated With

Expresses Tradition

Features Dish

Long-Form Articles

Uses Ingredient

Originated In

Take a Related Quiz