Mysteries of Ottoman Cuisine

MENSAL CULTURE

The Ottoman kitchen was hot merely a space where food was prepared. The place of the table was extremely important in the ingredients used, in the tableware, in the side dishes (types of salads for each different dish), in the beverages and in the breads.The respect of the people for each other was extremely important in this mensal culture.The Ottoman was very careful for making sure that the smell of the food being cooked did not bother, others, since these odours might be disturbing the not-so-well-off neighbours. For this reason, talks that might lead to such feelings were carefully avoided. The principle in such conversation was “not to make the rich ashamed, and the poor awed” while the proverbs had make this rule almost an iron-clad principle: “Problems arise when one eats and the other watches.”

TABLE TYPES

The Ottoman tradition foresaw a variety of tables
Family table, Guest table, Collective meal table, Special day table, Wedding and circumcision tables, Rhamadan table, Muharrem (the first month of lunar calendar) table, Hammam table, Palace table.

THE FAMILY TABLE

The Ottoman family eats twice a day: a brunch and a dinner. The centre of the table is the father. If there are grandparents, they sit at both sides of the father while the mother is between the children and helps them. A cloth is spread on the ground and a collapsible sexapodal atop supports the meal tray.
Spoons are arranged around the tray.
The Islamic Prophet had an important order for the family table: “Eat the family meals together with the whole family, because they bring prosperity to the whole family.”
The families generally obeyed this order.
Around the tray are placed cushions on which the family members sit slightly askew, with their right arms closer to the tray.
The water jug is outside of the tray, on the cloth.

The first course is generally a soup, served in an oversized copper tureen. The meal starts with a prayer by the father. There is not much conversation during the meal, laughters are discouraged and those who do not like the meals served never say so. Lips are never smacked and bread is consumed in small lumps torn off the slices and never bitten off. Those in a morose mood are silently warned to pull themselves together. Water is poured into the glasses of the thirsty by one of the younger members of the family and the rest awaits until he drinks it off in order to preserve his right in the meal.The food is taken from the same pot. There were at first no forks and knives, which reached the family table only with the advent of the Restoration Period and everybody gradually learned to use them.
The soup is followed by a meat dish with pilaf, then a cold olive oil dish or a fritter, crescendoed with a dessert or fruit.
At the end of the meal, the father utters the prandiolithany. All members of the family throw a grain of salt into their mouths and thank the cooker for the meal.
The grown daughter of the family then proceeds to the kitchen to brew the after-meal coffee. While the grandparents are still seated, the rest pick up the tableware and carry them to the kitchen. Bread crumbs are never left on the floor.

THE GUEST TABLE

Invitations extended generally to close relatives, friends neighbours were subject to some minor modifications. Depending on the proximity of the invitees, tables were laid separately for males and females or two separate tables were placed in the same room. A third possibility was to arrange the invitations for females during the daytime and for males in the evening when they returned from work.
The host usually extended the invitation by saying “Let’s have the dinner with us tonight, to partake what Lord has given us.”
The invitees used to come with an appropriate gift for the host or for the children. This custom did not apply much for the all-male invitations. The guest lady presented the gift package to the hostess with a statement like “This is but a small gift to you” to which she received a reply “Well, thank you; but why did you go into such troubles.”
It is on the records that the guests were given each a spoonful of honey or jam, suggestive of a wish to eat sweet and talk sweet.

There were also the family’s God’s guests dropping by during the meal time. They were first asked whether they had their meals or whether they were hungry. The host was never taken in surprise, never displayed his anger even if he were upset and always seated the guest at the table by saying that the “guest ate what he found, and not what he hoped”. If the thought the guest was not full, he frequently offered the cheese or salad bowls to him. Where the guest declined to partake them, he used to say: “A guest is a cherished member of the family, please take some more” while pushing the bowl toward him.
The guest always thanked to the host who filled his glass by saying: “Be as holy as the water” or, if the server was a young person, he would utter: “May the grace of God be upon you.”
The meal of which the menu depended on the family’s wealth, the season of the year and the city where they lived, started with a soup in the winter, followed by a meat dish, a pilaf, an olive oil dish or pasta and a dessert. When the ritual ended, the oldest of the guests thanked the host, recited a prayer and closed the meal with a poetical statement like: Let the divine halo be on your table, let the scourges be after from you, let our hosts forever be well-off.
Here are sole expressions used in these invitations by way of thanks:
Guest is the pride of the house, thank you. A guest is forever welcome. Say hello to a Turk and don’t worry about your meal.Cheese and bread are good to be had. The best of them all perhaps the following:
Think not what you will eat, but what you will make guest eat.

COLLECTIVE MEAL TABLES

The collective table tradition, obviously an offspring of our way of social life, was widespread at the garrisons, shrines, templets, caravanserais, schools and inns. Costs of the meals there were met generally by foundations.
The meal time was announced by the kitchenmaster from an elevated podium outside the building from which he used to intone aloud the phrase of “Come ye, to the meal”. Everybody would then immediately abandon work, wash their hands and proceed immediately to where the food was distributed. Everyone knew their places in the hierarchy, sit on their habitual cushions, cover their knees with the huge handwoven floorspread and respectfully await the trepolithany to be recited by the tablemaster.
Then all spoons dipped immediately into the huge tureen and so began the meal ritual. Rules of the family table were also valid here.
Talk, laughters, refusing food, biting into the bread slices and reaching for what belonged to others were all disapproved.
At the end of the meal, the tablemaster or a person that he selects for this purpose read the prayer and everybody took a grain of salt into their mouths.
The collective meal tables were as a rule male domains, and the women were not allowed there.

ALMSHOUSES

We find another sort of collective table in the almshouses, which were public kitchens intended to feed the poor. They were closely related with the Islamic traditions of zeqat (donation of one-fortieth of the annual revenue for philanthropic purposes) and fitre (handing to the poor the foodstuffs for one day or its cash value). Meals in the almshouses were free; all costs were borne by the foundations established by well-to-do citizens. Around four to five thousand meals were used to be offered a day in Istanbul and this figure rose even higher during religious holidays and festivity days.
Persons establishing foundations were held to donate their property to the almshouses run by the former as a requirement for the continuity of the service from these kitchens. A special type of bread, similar in appearance to a pampernickel, was used to be baked by the almshouses.