"Never say it's just food," is a popular saying about Turkish cuisine. Turkish dishes, along with French and Chinese, rank among the world's three great cuisines. Eating, culture and the culture of eating all go together here. With the invasion of the Turk peoples from the steppes of Central Asia into Constantinople, their simple dishes evolved into the cuisine of the Ottoman sultans...

Many people refer to them inaccurately as hors d'oeuvres; at the Bosporus they say "meze feast", for in times past these delicacies from the Orient were the dishes of a special meal during which, from early evening to daybreak, the guests would debate, jest, eat and drink. The meze feast often consisted then of over a hundred small dishes, for a Turkish proverb says: "When nothing is left over, th..

For a long time it was regarded as too elaborate, too difficult and too expensive: the palace cuisine of the Sultans of the Tokapi Seraglio in Istanbul. Only in recent times has it been reappraised, and meanwhile chefs have discovered entire cookery books in the Ottoman archives. The traditional seraglio cuisine is now being served once again in some special restaurants on the Bosporus...

With the conquest of Constantinople by the Turkish invaders, fish arrived on the menu of the Ottoman Sultans. The country's abundance of fish was something new, unknown to the Turkish horsemen. Gradually, however, fish dishes became a particular speciality of Turkish cuisine. Whereas with many other dishes, centuries-old traditions are still cultivated, a creative approach has meanwh..

"Eat sweet, speak sweet" is one of the many proverbs of the Turkish cuisine. People's behaviour to one another, indeed life itself, should be as sweet as the numerous varieties of puddings, jams and confectionary. In the 18th century travellers from Europe already raved about the wonderful sweets of the Turkish cuisine, which bear mysterious names such as "wound turban", "sultan", "seraglio", "wom..

Hardly any Turkish "delight" is as renowned throughout the world as Turkish coffee. In the Sultan's court there was already a special "master of the coffee", there were special ceremonies for making and drinking coffee, and there were reports from holy men, who regarded coffee and tobacco due to their stimulating effect as irreconcilable with Islam. Finally, however, coffee became the "w..