In Defense of Turkish Delight

A few years ago, I was standing in the gift shop at Mount Vernon when I spotted something unusual. Minutes later, I was walking out of the store, not with a mug with George Washington’s face printed on it, but holding a tiny package of Turkish delight.

Said Turkish delight was made by True Treats, a company in Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, that specializes in researching and recreating historic candy. Honestly, I was a little hesitant to try it.

Like many Americans, my only exposure to the words “Turkish delight” came from The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis. In the novel, the character Edmund betrays his family to the White Witch after eating a box of enchanted Turkish delight. Generations of children, then, fantasized about how wonderful such a treat could be, to make someone become the most famous traitor in the history of children’s literature. And, going by Internet anecdotes, many young Americans, when they actually tasted Turkish delight, decided it was gross.

Atlas Obscura even published an article titled “C.S. Lewis’s Greatest Fiction Was Convincing American Kids That They Would Like Turkish Delight.” Writer Jess Zimmerman points out a number of reasons why this candy, to many people, doesn’t live up to expectations when they finally try it. The texture is soft and gummy. Common flavorings such as rose and pistachio can be off-putting to those who aren’t used to them. Also, Turkish delight is made with cornstarch, water, and an immense amount of sugar, making it powerfully sweet.

I had all this information in my mind when I tried my orange-flavored Turkish delight outside of Mount Vernon. And, to my surprise, I found it tasty, with a light citrus tang and a soft, yielding, gummy texture. Would I betray my family for it? No. But was it a culinary horror show? Not at all.

So, last Christmas, I decided to share some Turkish delight with my friends. My old copy of The Joy of Cooking contains several recipes for it, and I made batch after batch, in flavors like pomegranate, apricot, and orange. The recipe that called for pectin as the thickener was much more preferable, in my friends’ opinion, to the one made with gelatin, which had the consistency of extremely thick Jell-O Jigglers.

But this was not true Turkish delight. The real stuff, as many recipes online told me, was made with cornstarch, and required long, careful cooking and much stirring. After one sweaty afternoon in the kitchen following a YouTube recipe, I had finished up another tray of Turkish delight. The next day, I showed the cornstarch-dusted cubes to the award-winning Turkish food writer and researcher Aylin Öney Tan, who kindly told me they looked “very proper.”

Speaking over Zoom from Istanbul, Tan explained that Turkish delight likely started out as an age-old “winter provision” of semolina and grape juice cooked together until thickened. At the beginning of the 19th century, though, the starch-and-sugar version of Turkish delight became a delicacy, one that was perfected in the kitchens of the Ottoman court and spread to confectioners across the Middle East and Europe.

The Ottoman Turkish name for the sweet, she noted, is rahat-ul hulküm. Borrowed from Arabic, it means “easy on the throat.” “But rahat-ul hulküm was too long to say, even in Turkish. They started calling it a shorter version: lokum.”

Flavors range from the classic rose to citrus to gum mastic, a type of piney resin harvested from the wild pistachio tree. Sometimes, confectioners add nuts to the mixture. But while flavors vary wildly, the basic formula of Turkish delight remains starch, sugar, water, and lots of stirring. “It’s toilsome,” Tan said. “You have to mix several hours to get the right consistency.”

The huge amount of sugar required, as well as the time needed to make it, made Turkish delight into a special delicacy for centuries. Edmund gets a lot of heat for selling out his family for candy, but for any English child living through World War II, a whole box of Turkish delight would be an unbelievable treat, considering that sugar was rationed at the time.

These days, said Tan, “it’s not as fashionable as in the old times.” Back in the day, people might have brought a box of Turkish delight as a present during a visit, while today, chocolate is the sweet of choice. “You never bring Turkish delight because chocolate is more expensive,” Tan added.

But Turkish delight, Tan noted, has not stayed the same over the years. Some confectioners make chocolate-coated versions, and others roll it in coconut to give it a fluffy look and texture. In the case of the latter, “it’s called ‘lokum with a fur,’” Tan laughed. “But in my mind, this is a betrayal to the very core essence of Turkish delight because it wouldn’t just glide through your throat.”

My own homemade Turkish delight certainly had that gliding quality. Without any nuts or coconut, it melted softly in the mouth, leaving a smooth, syrupy sensation behind. It reminded me of the True Treats candy I had tried, but a little softer. But I did want to try a few more types, so the other day, I bought a box at a local Yemeni coffee shop.

The four large rolls of Turkish delight came rolled in rose petals, pistachios, and even layers of creamy nougat. The flavors and textures were interesting, and all of them were much more elaborate than my homemade Turkish delight. After sampling it all (and feeling rather sick, like Edmund did after eating an entire box), I found that I liked what I had made more. Despite its simplicity, it had a softer texture and a richer fruit taste.

Fanciful flavors and ingredients are one way to make Turkish delight relevant in the modern era. While she’s skeptical of some newer flavor innovations (such as coconut), Tan and her friend, Chinese-food researcher Fuchsia Dunlop, once asked confectioner Şekerci Cafer Erol to make Szechuan pepper–flavored Turkish delight. It was met with mixed reactions at the Oxford Food Symposium, Tan remembered, laughing. But generally, “I think we have lost the innocence of Turkish delight,” she continued. The classic, simple flavors of yesteryear “won’t push a child to sin anymore.”

Despite that, Tan believes that Turkish delight might be heading toward a new golden age. The launching of artisanal brands such as Marsel Delights and the opening of Şekerci Cafer Erol flagship’s store in London are signaling to her that there’s a growing interest in the treat beyond the pages of children’s literature. “Some classics fall from being fashionable, but then they make a comeback.”