Ottoman Foods: 10 Dishes From the Sultan's Table You Can Cook at Home

Ottoman cuisine blends Turkish, Middle Eastern, and Western influences, shaped by the empires that ruled this land: the Ottomans, the Seljuk Sultanate of Rum, and the Byzantines before them. It is the palace layer of Turkish cuisine, and much of it can still be cooked in a home kitchen.

The list below covers eight savory dishes, one dessert, and one drink. Few of them show up on menus outside Turkey, which is exactly why they work at a dinner party: your guests will almost certainly be tasting them for the first time. If you are headed to the city itself, our Istanbul food guide maps where to eat today.

All 10 Ottoman dishes at a glance

Dish	What it is	Worth knowing
Piliç Topkapı	Chicken thighs stuffed with nutty, sweet pilaf	Baked until the outside crisps
Mutancana	Lamb with shallots, dried fruit, almonds, honey	A favorite of Fatih Sultan Mehmet
Vezir Parmağı	Semolina pastry soaked in syrup	Finger-shaped, named for a vizier’s fable
Hünkar Beğendi	Lamb in tomato sauce over smoky eggplant puree	Possibly created for Napoleon III’s visit
Patlıcanlı Pilav	Spiced eggplant rice	Vegan without the yogurt topping
Piruhi	Tulum cheese dumplings with walnut butter	In Kamil Paşa’s 19th-century food book
Mıhlama	Melted Trabzon cheese with corn flour and butter	Black Sea dish, eaten fondue style
Düğün Çorbası	Lamb neck soup thickened with egg yolk and lemon	The Ottoman “wedding soup”
Keşkek	Slow-cooked wheat and meat stew	UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage, 2011
Demirhindi Şerbeti	Spiced tamarind sherbet	The drink behind the word “sorbet”

1. Piliç Topkapı

Chicken stuffed with rice exists in many kitchens. Piliç Topkapı stuffs chicken thighs with a pilaf that runs nutty and sweet at once, seasoned with the aromatic spices of a cuisine built around spice bazaars. Ambitious cooks fold in more than one variety of raisin. The whole thing bakes until the outside crisps, so a serving looks plain until your fork breaks through and finds the rice waiting inside.

Try it at home: Piliç Topkapı recipe

2. Mutancana

Mutancana was a favorite of Fatih Sultan Mehmet, and it is usually made with lamb. The meat is sauteed in butter with shallots, then dried fruits and almonds go into the pan. A glaze of honey and sumac pulls it in three directions at once: sweet, savory, and sour. Serve it with saffron rice for the full palace effect, or swap in chicken, or build a vegan version. The result sits closest to a Moroccan tagine, honeyed and nutty rather than comforting.

Try it at home: Mutancana recipe

3. Vezir Parmağı

Vezir parmağı, “the vizier’s finger,” is a light, buttery semolina pastry. The finger-shaped morsels are drenched in a sweet, zesty syrup, which puts it squarely in the syrup-soaked wing of Turkish desserts.

A folk fable explains the name. During a hunt, a vizier accidentally cut off the sultan’s finger. The sultan, enraged, sent him to prison, while the vizier only said “there is good in every deed.” On a later hunt the sultan was captured by cannibals, who ate every man in the party except him: his missing finger made him “deficient.” The sultan returned, embraced the vizier, and apologized. The vizier’s reply: had he never been imprisoned, he would have been on that hunt, and with no deficiency on his body he would surely have been eaten. There is good in every deed.

Try it at home: Vezir Parmağı recipe

4. Hünkar Beğendi

The name translates as “the sultan loved it.” Chunks of lamb are stewed in a tangy tomato sauce, then poured over a creamy, smoky eggplant puree. One story says it came out of a competition to create a dish for Napoleon III’s visit to Istanbul. The story may or may not be true. The dish needs no help from it.

Try it at home: Hünkar Beğendi recipe

5. Patlıcanlı Pilav

Most countries have found a way to dress rice up: Italy has risotto, Afghanistan has pulao, Spain has paella, India has biryani. The Turkish answer is patlıcanlı pilav, eggplant rice, a colorful, dark dish where the fluffiness of the rice matters above all. Hold the yogurt topping and the dish is vegan, and the spicing is generous enough that you smell it before you taste it.

Try it at home: Patlıcanlı Pilav recipe

6. Piruhi

Piruhi sits somewhere between a börek and a mantı. Soft tulum cheese is mixed with a touch of onion and parsley, then wrapped in an unleavened dough rolled so thin you can barely taste it. The dumplings are finished with walnuts roasted in butter. An unconventional cook might add tomato sauce, though it needs none.

The dish appears in Grand Vizier Mehmet Kamil Paşa’s book on 19th-century food. “English Kamil,” as he was known for his Anglophilia, was a fan, and these dumplings travel well across borders.

Try it at home: Piruhi recipe

7. Mıhlama

Mıhlama, pronounced “mooh-lah-ma,” comes from Turkey’s Black Sea region in the north. Yellowy-orange cheese is melted down, thickened with corn flour, and enriched with butter. The traditional cheese is Trabzon cheese, made from unpasteurized milk, with a rich, complex flavor that may have you checking your country’s import rules. A high-quality aged cheddar works as a substitute.

Try it at home: Mıhlama recipe

8. Düğün Çorbası

Düğün çorbası means “wedding soup,” and in the Ottoman palace kitchens it was cooked in a cauldron over an open fire. Lamb, usually the tender neck, is boiled for hours until the meat falls apart. Carrots and onions go in, and the soup is thickened with egg yolks, lemon juice, and sometimes flour. Today it mostly comes out of a pressure cooker, finished with a pinch of paprika and a drizzle of butter. Each spoonful carries the lamb with a hint of lemon tang. It belongs near the top of the Turkish soups you can make at home.

Try it at home: Düğün Çorbası recipe

9. Keşkek

Keşkek is served at ceremonies, weddings above all, and UNESCO designated it an Intangible Cultural Heritage of Turkey in 2011. The ingredient list is short: wheat grains, a little oil, chicken or meat, and tomato sauce. Some cooks use barley instead of wheat. Either way you get whole grains, protein, and fat in one pot, a slow-cooked dish with the texture of a savory porridge. One plate is a full meal, and it could give chicken noodle soup real competition as sick-day food.

Try it at home: Keşkek recipe

10. Demirhindi Şerbeti

Follow the word “sorbet” backward and you land here. The French refined it from the Italian “sorbetto,” and the Italians took it from the Ottoman sherbet, a sweet spiced drink rather than an iced dessert. Sherbet was mentioned as far back as the 11th century in Avicenna’s “Canon of Medicine,” and the ingredient list reads like an herbalist’s shelf: tamarind for antioxidants, cinnamon for winter warmth, fennel for digestion, cloves against tooth decay, and that is only the start. It is one of the oldest entries among Turkish drinks.

Try it at home: Demirhindi Şerbeti recipe

From the palace kitchen to your table

These ten dishes make the case for cooking Ottoman food yourself: lamb glazed with honey, dumplings out of a vizier’s book, a soup once stirred over palace fires. More cook-along dishes live in our Turkish recipes collection. And if you would rather eat your way through the city with a local leading, that is what our Istanbul food tours have done since 2013, in small groups capped at 10 guests.