19th Century Istanbul Cuisine Seminar at YESAM - Culinary Arts Center

YESAM seminar was conducted by Assistant Professor Dr. Ozge Samanci, who teaches at Yeditepe University, Gastronomy and Culinary Arts Department. Dr. Samanci, who has been studying and researching 19th century Ottoman Cuisine for many years, is an expert on Ottoman and Turkish culinary culture and history.

In the seminar, Dr. Samanci shared some important and interesting facts about the palace cuisine and the street food of 19th-century Istanbul.

“Starting with 15th century and until the 20th century, Istanbul has been the center of the Ottoman Empire. The dynamics of the palace, being the capital, and the cultural variety of Istanbul have all played an important role in shaping the culinary culture within the city.

The cuisine of Istanbul has been enriched by being the capital of, not only the Ottoman Empire, but also the Byzantine Empire. This resulted in all varieties of foodstuff being continuously shipped to Istanbul from all over Rumelia and Anatolia.

Subsidizing foodstuffs in İstanbul has always been very important, especially for meat and wheat. A lack of these two main ingredients would have made the public unhappy and caused an uprising. The food that was coming to Istanbul was not only coming from cities closer to Istanbul but also from cities that were farther away. For example, rice was coming from Egypt, apricots were coming from Damascus, butter was coming from Crimea and honey was coming from Athens.

Istanbul was known to be a very colorful and multicultural city based on the population of different religions and ethnic groups such as Armenians, Jews, Rums, and Muslims. All of these shared the same culinary heritage, but the differences became clear once religious prohibitions came into effect. For example during lent, Christians did not consume any meat, butter or other kinds of animal-based products. Thus they consumed vegetables cooked in olive oil, and seafood dishes that have become a very important part of Istanbul’s cuisine over the years.

In the 1850’s, Istanbul got swept up in a European trend that affected everything including the food. Istanbul got introduced to European style restaurants and cafes around 1880’s, which resulted in the increased usage of forks and knives.

While this colorful new trend was taking effect on Istanbul cuisine, the street food culture remained refined. All types of shops and market places that sold specialty products, kebab shops, taverns and old-style soup kitchens continued to exist and represent the traditional culinary culture.

The 19th century is also important in another aspect. During this time, the publication of cookbooks took off very quickly. In fact the first book was published in 1844 by Mehmet Kamil, and became the basis of all the other cookbooks yet to be published”.

Dr. Samanci continued her speech by explaining the transition period of the palace cuisine from traditional to European style. She shared some examples from old newspapers of feast menus and pictures of special dinners that were held in the palace.

The rest of the seminar was dedicated to the street vendors of the 19th century, and Dr. Samanci shared the following remarks:

“19th century is the perfect period to research the street food culture of Istanbul as it was very abundant. Foreign travel journals, postcards, pictures and most importantly, Resat Ekrem Kocu’s book “Istanbul Ansiklopedisi” (Encyclopedia of Istanbul) provides an extensive amount of information regarding the food being sold on the streets of Istanbul.

Street vendors would sell small kitchen supplies along with all kinds of foods imaginable: fresh fruits and vegetables; prepared foods such as pudding, halva, simit (round bread with sesame); food that was cooked a la minute such as kofte (ground beef patties), liver, and kebabs; and drinks such as sherbets, water, coffee, boza (fermented millet drink) and even raki (the traditional alcoholic beverage made from grapes and anise).  These street vendors played a very important part of 19th century Istanbul scene.

The most interesting one out of all these street vendors were the street cooks who would carry a portable tray, with a grill in the middle and a pot of hot food on top. Once they see an appropriate spot, they will open up shop and set up a few chairs and a table and serve their food to hungry passersby. Usually they would sell rice with chickpeas, rice with chicken, white bean salad, grilled liver, rice cooked with lamb stock, or couscous.”

After the seminar, the participants had a chance to sample some street food such as rice with chickpeas and tamarind sherbet and some palace specialties like lamb stew with prunes, cucumber with walnut sauce, and halva with rose water.

Lecture video is in Turkish.