The Ottoman Palace Kitchen: From Topkapı's Cauldrons to Our Tables

Visitors to Topkapı Palace in Istanbul come across a long building running along one side of the second courtyard, its roof lined with row upon row of chimneys. This is the Matbah-ı Âmire, the imperial kitchens. For centuries everything from the sultan's table to the daily meals of thousands of palace residents was cooked here. Many of the refinements we love in Turkish food today were shaped in the hands of the cooks trained in these kitchens.

The palace kitchens

Topkapı Palace was built in the 1460s and 1470s under Sultan Mehmed II, after the conquest of Istanbul. The kitchens were an important part of the palace from the start. Damaged in a great fire in 1574, they were rebuilt under Mimar Sinan, the chief imperial architect of the day, and the domed, chimneyed building we see now largely reflects that period.

The palace kitchen was not one kitchen but almost a city of kitchens:

• The privy kitchen: Where meals for the sultan and his inner circle were prepared.
• The helvahane: The confectionery kitchen, which made halva, sherbets, pastes and preserves, and even some medicines and perfumes.
• The pantries: Storerooms for butter, honey, rice, spices and dry goods.
• Bakeries and other sections: Ovens for bread and pastry, and hearths cooking for different groups within the palace.

The number of kitchen staff varied greatly over time; sources speak of hundreds of people, and many more in busy periods. Cooks, confectioners, bakers, pantry keepers and apprentices worked in a strict hierarchy. Officials kept detailed account books recording how much meat, rice, butter and sugar was used each day. Thanks to these registers, historians today know a great deal about what was cooked for the palace.

The empire's pantry

The palace kitchen was supplied from every corner of the empire. Rice and sugar from Egypt, butter and honey from the Black Sea and the Balkans, fruit and spices from across Anatolia, and cinnamon, cloves and black pepper from distant trade routes... The richness of the palace kitchen mirrored the size of the empire.

Another treasure you can still see in the kitchens is the palace's great collection of Chinese porcelain. These plates and bowls were prized not only for their beauty; according to legend, they were believed to change colour if the food was poisoned.

Guilds and the tradition of mastery

In Ottoman cities, trades such as cooks, bakers, halva makers and kebab makers were organised into guilds. An apprentice worked for years beside a master before rising to journeyman and finally to master himself. Guilds protected the quality of the trade and kept an eye on prices and measures.

The famous seventeenth-century traveller Evliya Çelebi describes, in his Book of Travels, the grand processions of Istanbul's tradespeople and hundreds of different crafts. His account shows how large a place food trades held in city life. The palace kitchen was the summit of this tradition of mastery: cooks trained at the palace gradually moved out to the mansions of pashas and the eateries of the city, carrying palace refinement to a wider public.

Kitchen and state

In the Ottoman world, the kitchen was woven into the language and symbols of the state. The emblem of the Janissary corps was a cauldron, and some of its ranks carried kitchen titles such as "soup master" and "head cook". When the Janissaries overturned their cauldrons, it was a sign of discontent and rebellion against the sultan.

Another famous tradition was the sending of trays of baklava from the palace to the Janissaries in the middle of Ramadan. Known as the "baklava procession", the ceremony was a show of the sultan's generosity towards his soldiers.

A legacy that lives on

The palace kitchen's influence still lives on our tables. Thinly rolled pastry sheets, carefully made pilafs, dishes pairing meat with fruit, halvas and sherbets are all part of this heritage. In the nineteenth century European cooking also influenced the palace, bringing new ingredients and ways of serving. Published in 1844, the Melceü't-Tabbâhîn is regarded as the first printed Ottoman cookbook and sheds light on the food of that era.

Stories about the palace origins of particular dishes often drift between legend and history. Tales that hünkâr beğendi was created for a sultan or a visiting foreign empress are widespread, for example, but they are not backed by firm documents.

Final word

When you visit Topkapı's kitchens, look at those huge cauldrons, chimneys and porcelains through a cook's eyes. Behind a pilaf, an olive-oil dish or a halva you make at home today lies a tradition of skill built up over centuries at those hearths.