Mouth Watering Turkish Delight

Your Visiting To Turkey Without Tasting Turkish Delight Would Be An Incomplete Journey to Turkey…

Did You Taste The Mouth Watering Turkish Delight Yet?

Surely you must be knowing about the different varieties of famous Turkish Delight or Lokum mostly consumed during special occasion and the festive season of Ramadan in Turkey.Turkish delight is the British name for a sweet called Lokum, one of many spellings and a corrupted version of the original phrase, “rahatü’l-hulkum”, which means “giving rest to the throat.”

Istanbul is popular for its local Turkish delight, there are more than a hundred varieties and combinations of Turkish delights.These sweets and lokum has interesting histories of its own. Some types of lokum that appeal to different taste buds are with hazelnut, rose petals, walnut, pistachio, gum mastic, lemon, peppermint, pomegranate, saffron, chocolate, coconut, and fruit.

 

The Real Turkish Delight

The oldest, most well documented account of Turkish delight traces back to an Anatolian man named Bekir Efendi, later titled Haci Bekir following the completion of his pilgrim duties. Haci Bekir migrated to Istanbul to establish his now legendary confectionery shop in 1777, his first shop, Haci Bekir, in a narrow street close to the spice bazaar, is still owned by his descendants and run by the fifth generation of families he employed. In fact this very first shop of Haci Bekir and him serving an Ottoman mother with her two young children were the subject of a watercolour painting by Amadeo Preziosi , a Maltese painter known for his paintings of the Ottoman Empire and the Balkans in the 18th and 19th century. The painting is currently on display at the Louvre Museum in Paris.

Many other notable travellers share their experiences of the sweet, amongst which an American Naval physician named James De Kay notes in his memoir of his visit to Turkey in the first half of 19th century:

. . . a delicious pasty-mass which melts away in the mouth, and leaves a fragrant flavour behind. It is, as we are informed, made by mixing honey with the inspissated juice of the fresh grape, and the Turks, who esteem it highly, call it “rahat locoom” or repose to the throat, a picturesque name to which it seems fairly entitled.