Turkish Delight

What lokum is

Lokum is a confection made from sugar, water and cornstarch, cooked slowly until it thickens into a translucent gel, then flavored, set and cut into cubes. The texture is the point: firm enough to hold a square edge, soft enough to give under the teeth, and never sticky. It is dusted with powdered sugar and starch so the pieces do not cling together in the box.

The English name, Turkish delight, is a nineteenth-century marketing phrase. In Turkey the word is lokum, from the Arabic rahat al-hulqum, "comfort of the throat." A box of it sits on the counter of every sweet shop in Istanbul, and a single piece arrives on the saucer with every cup of Turkish coffee.

Hacı Bekir and the 1777 shop

Sugar confections had been made in Ottoman kitchens for centuries, but they were set with flour and honey and were closer to a paste. The modern recipe belongs to Bekir Efendi, a confectioner from Kastamonu on the Black Sea who opened a shop in the Bahçekapı district of Istanbul in 1777, a few steps from the Spice Bazaar. He replaced flour with starch and honey with refined sugar, both newly available, and the result held its shape and kept for weeks.

Bekir Efendi made the pilgrimage to Mecca and was known afterward as Hacı Bekir, the name the business still carries. The shop supplied the palace at Topkapı and later Dolmabahçe, and the family firm remains in the same street under the fifth generation.

Koska, founded in 1907 in Denizli, the province that holds Pamukkale, and now based in Istanbul, is the other large traditional house. It is known for halva as much as for lokum, and its boxes are the ones most often seen in supermarkets abroad.

How it reached the West

British travelers carried boxes of lokum home in the early nineteenth century, and the phrase "Turkish delight" appears in English by the 1860s, usually for rose-flavored cubes wrapped in paper. It became a standard Christmas sweet in Britain, which is why C. S. Lewis could use it, without explanation, as the treat the White Witch offers Edmund in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe in 1950.

Most of what was sold abroad was a soft, heavily perfumed rose lokum, and the Western idea of the sweet still leans that way. Inside Turkey, rose is one flavor among many, and the nut-filled varieties are considered the serious ones.

How it is made

The process has changed little since 1777. Sugar and water are boiled with a little citric acid or lemon to keep the sugar from crystallizing. Cornstarch dissolved in water is added, and the mixture is cooked over low heat and stirred without pause for five to six hours until it pulls away from the sides of the pan and turns glassy.

Flavoring goes in near the end: rosewater, lemon, orange, mint or mastic, and nuts if the recipe calls for them. The mass is poured into large trays lined with starch and left overnight to set. The next day the slab is turned out onto a bed of powdered sugar and starch and cut into cubes by hand with a long knife.

Industrial lokum shortens the cooking and sometimes adds gelatin or glucose syrup for texture, which is why a supermarket cube and a confectioner's cube are different things. The traditional version is set entirely by starch and is naturally vegan.

The varieties that matter

Sade, plain, is the unflavored cube and the honest test of a maker: with nothing to hide behind, the texture and the clean sugar taste have to be right. Rose lokum, güllü, is the classic export flavor and should taste of petals, not perfume. Lemon and orange are the other citrus standards.

Fıstıklı, with whole Antep pistachios, is the version Turks buy for themselves, and çifte kavrulmuş, "double-roasted," is its richer cousin, cooked longer for a deeper color and a chewier bite. Fındıklı uses hazelnuts from the Black Sea. Cevizli uses walnut, often with pomegranate in the eastern provinces.

Sultan lokum is a large pistachio cube rolled in coconut or crushed nuts. Fıstıklı sucuk is a log of walnuts or pistachios on a string, dipped repeatedly in the lokum mixture until it looks like a sausage, then sliced. Kaymaklı, with clotted cream folded in, is eaten fresh and does not travel.

How to buy it

Buy from a şekerci, a confectioner, and buy by weight. Ask to taste; every serious shop expects it.

A good cube is translucent at the edge, holds a clean corner and springs back slightly when pressed. If it is cloudy, tacky or leaves sugar on your fingers, it has been sitting too long or was never cooked properly.

Pre-packed souvenir boxes in the tourist streets around Hagia Sophia and the Grand Bazaar are often the cheaper industrial kind. Check the label for gelatin and artificial flavors, neither of which belongs in the traditional recipe. A 500 g box of assorted nut lokum is the standard gift, and the historic shops will pack it in a tin that keeps for months.

Every region keeps its own sweet beside it: candied chestnuts in Bursa, pişmaniye in İzmit, pestil and köme on the Black Sea.

How it is served

At home and in cafés, lokum is served one piece at a time on the saucer beside Turkish coffee, and the pairing is deliberate: the bitterness of the coffee cuts the sugar. It is also offered to guests on arrival, at religious holidays and after funerals, and a box is the standard gift when visiting.

It belongs to the sweet end of Turkish cuisine but is not a dessert; nobody orders a plate of lokum after dinner. Keep the box closed and at room temperature, never in the refrigerator, which hardens the starch.

Eat nut varieties within a few weeks, and rose or plain within a couple of months. Read the wider history of Anatolia for the Ottoman world that produced it.

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