Eggplant çullama is one of the simplest dishes on the summer table in Amasya. Eggplant, pepper and tomato are roasted directly over fire, peeled and chopped, then mixed with onion, garlic and parsley. The resulting mixture is served in some households cold, as a meze or salad, and in others lightly warmed beside meat dishes. It most closely resembles what other regions call eggplant paste or eggplant salad; in the recorded Amasya recipe, however, the vegetables are not reduced to a paste but finely chopped, so that they keep their own texture within the mixture.

The written record of the dish is found in the book Amasya Mutfağı (Amasya Cuisine), published by the Governorship of Amasya in 2010 under the editorship of H. Harun Yörgüç. The book collects regional dishes by section, from soups and pilafs to pastries and desserts, and gives çullama under the heading "Spesiyaliteler" (Specialities) on page 82. The Ministry of Culture and Tourism's page on traditional Amasya cuisine publishes the same recipe, citing the book, under the category "Mezeler" (Meze). In the official record, then, the dish is not defined as a main course but counted as a meze that accompanies the meal. No document older than this record that names the dish has been found in the sources available so far; the history of çullama therefore rests less on written documents than on what has been passed down orally in home kitchens.

Its Place in the Book Amasya Mutfağı

Amasya Mutfağı appeared as number 42 in the governorship's publication series and was prepared as a bilingual book in Turkish and English. Each recipe is given in both languages on the same page: the Turkish list of ingredients and method stand on the left, their English equivalents on the right. The English name of çullama in the book is "Aubergine Çullama"; the compilers did not attempt to translate the name of the dish, rendering only the eggplant into English and leaving the word çullama as it is. There are small differences between the two texts. The Turkish list asks for "large seedless" eggplants, while the English list says only "large aubergines". The Turkish text says the garlic is finely chopped, while the English text asks for it to be crushed and stresses that the roasted vegetables be chopped into "very small pieces".

Where çullama stands within the structure of the book is also worth noting. The Specialities section comes at the end of the book, right after the desserts, and contains only five recipes: eggplant çullama, borani, dolma içi, kesme ev makarnası and cilbir. The borani here is a dish of eggs cracked into boiling water and lifted out with a skimmer, then covered with strained yoghurt flavored with mint and garlic and served cold. Dolma içi is a filling cooked with green lentils, coarse wheat, and pastırma or pounded tail-fat cracklings; according to the book's note, it can also be wrapped in vine leaves in bundles and eaten like dolma. Kesme ev makarnası is a homemade noodle whose dough is kneaded with eggs alone, cut to the thickness of a matchstick and dried on cloth spreads; the book adds that homemade noodles are also called erişte, but that Amasya erişte is something different. Cilbir is a hot dish made with minced meat, eggs, tomato and homemade noodles. These five dishes share no common type; the section seems to have been created to bring together regional recipes that did not fit under the headings of soups, meat, vegetables, pilafs or desserts. This is an inference, since the book does not explain the criteria for the section. That çullama appears here rather than among the vegetable dishes suggests that the compilers set it apart from an ordinary vegetable dish.

The Word Çullama

The name çullama is used in different parts of Anatolia for very different dishes, so the Amasya dish has to be told apart from others that share its name. The Turkish Language Association's Güncel Türkçe Sözlük gives the word three senses: "the act of çullamak"; in regional speech, an oven dish in which rabbit, lamb or chicken is fried and baked with spiced pilaf laid between two sheets of yufka; and, again in regional speech, a thick flour soup. The same dictionary explains çullamak as "to put a çul on an animal", and defines çul as a coarse weave usually made of hair, or an animal cover made of hair or wool, deriving it from the Arabic cull. In the oven dish of the dictionary, the meat and pilaf are covered with yufka, which suggests that the name may be connected with the sense of "covering"; this, however, is an interpretation, and the dictionary does not separately explain the origin of the dish's name.

In general, çullama is the name given to dishes made with a batter of egg and flour. In Konya, çullama is a kind of kadınbudu köfte (rice-and-meat croquette) that is thought to have taken its name because it is coated in egg and flour before frying. In this dish, croquettes made of minced meat, rice and onion are first boiled, then dipped in a batter of egg and flour of a thin porridge consistency, fried in butter and served with an onion salad. The encyclopedia entry describing it does not present the origin of the name as established fact; it offers it as a supposition, saying the dish "must have taken" its name this way. The coating of the croquette in egg batter also comes close to the dictionary's sense of covering, but this closeness too remains an inference.

Regional food compilations also list çullamas made with squash blossoms, spinach or grated zucchini; what they share is the use of a dough or batter of egg and flour. None of this applies to Amasya's eggplant çullama: it contains no egg, flour or dough, and everything that distinguishes the dish comes from the roasted vegetables. There is no layer covering the vegetables either. No reliable source has been found that explains why the name was given to this dish.

A confusion should also be mentioned. Some pieces circulating on the internet describe Amasya eggplant çullama as a dish in which a mixture of egg, flour and spices is poured over roasted or fried eggplant and baked. This does not agree with the record in the book or with local home recipes; in the Amasya version there are only vegetables, onion, garlic, parsley, oil and seasoning. That description appears to have been mixed up with other dishes that bear the same name.

The Recorded Recipe

The recipe in Amasya Mutfağı is quite short; in the version published by the Ministry it serves four. The ingredients are six large seedless eggplants, two tomatoes, one large bell pepper, two medium onions, two cloves of garlic, half a bunch of parsley, one tea glass of oil, salt, black pepper and red pepper. The eggplants, bell pepper and tomatoes are roasted over fire; once their skins are peeled, they are chopped finely. The onion is cut into half-moon slices, the parsley and garlic are finely chopped, and everything is mixed and served. The record does not say when the oil and seasoning are added, which suggests a dish that adapts easily in the home kitchen and does not depend on exact measures.

The onion in the recorded recipe is noteworthy. It is not cooked; it enters the mixture in half-moon slices and gives a sharp answer to the sweet smokiness of the roasted vegetables. In this respect çullama differs from cooked eggplant dishes in which the vegetables are sautéed in a pan, and comes closer to salads made with roasted vegetables. The recipe in the book contains no lemon, pomegranate molasses or yoghurt. It is said that in some home versions one of these is added; but since they do not appear in the official record, they cannot be counted as part of the regional recipe and should be understood as a choice of the home kitchen.

The specific call for seedless eggplants is a care also met in Amasya's other eggplant dishes. The geographical indication document for eggplant pehli likewise records that care is taken for the eggplants used to be seedless. An eggplant with few seeds and full flesh cooks softer over the embers and leaves no coarse grains in the mixture when chopped; the sources do not state this reason openly, but the repetition of the same condition in two recipes shows that particular importance is given to the choice of eggplant in the region.

The Work of Roasting

What determines the character of çullama is the roasting. In the dictionary's definition, közlemek means to cook meat, vegetables, fruit or dough over embers. Eggplant and pepper are turned over the fire until their skins are lightly charred; the tomato is roasted in the same way. The smoke of the fire gives the vegetables a smell that oven-baked or pan-cooked vegetables do not have. After roasting the skins peel off easily, revealing the soft flesh inside. Letting the chopped roasted eggplant stand in a colander and squeezing lemon over it, so that its bitter juice drains away, is a practice found in home recipes. In some households the flesh of the eggplant is mashed with a wooden spoon while the roasted peppers are chopped finely; this brings çullama even closer to eggplant paste.

In the region, roasting is considered a skill, and the secret of the flavor is sought in the fire. In home kitchens today roasting is also done on the stove top, in the oven, or in appliances called közmatik; even so, the real smell of the dish comes from vegetables roasted over a grill or wood fire. A recent recipe describes two ways of roasting in detail: the vegetables are roasted in a cast-iron pot, turned every ten minutes, or baked in an oven preheated to 180 degrees for twenty-five to thirty minutes until the eggplants soften. The same recipe advises putting the roasted vegetables in a container with a lid and letting them rest for about fifteen minutes before peeling; the steam gathered in the closed container makes the skin come away from the flesh easily. That the work is done in summer, when eggplants are plentiful, also shows the dish's tie to the season in Amasya.

Roasting is not peculiar to çullama in Amasya cuisine. In şıngır kebab the green peppers are roasted over fire and laid on the cooked kebab, while the eggplant cooks on the skewer over the same fire. The smell that the embers give to vegetables appears as a shared flavor in the region's tradition of kebab and meze. In çullama, without meat, this smell carries the whole identity of the dish on its own.

Variations in Home Recipes

As with all regional food, the same dish is made a little differently in every home. The version in the book is the plainest form, mixed with raw onion and with no vegetable cooked in a pan. In other recipes, roasted eggplant is combined with a vegetable sauce prepared in a pan. In one of them the onion is sautéed in olive oil until it changes color, chopped green peppers and kapya peppers are added, then tomato paste, peeled and diced tomatoes and garlic are put in and the vegetables are cooked with the lid on until they release and absorb their water. The cubed roasted eggplant is added last and the dish is served warm or cold. This recipe uses five eggplants, one onion, two green peppers, two kapya peppers, two tomatoes and two or three cloves of garlic.

That the dish can be eaten as a main dish, a salad or a meze is a point the recipe authors themselves stress. Another home recipe describes sautéing the onion with garlic in a pot and adding, once the onion has softened, the long green and kapya peppers and then the tomatoes. Using two sugar cubes to balance the taste of the onion, leaving the chopped eggplant in a colander with lemon squeezed over it, and cooking it with the mixture for five more minutes are the details of this recipe.

A third recipe was published in 2020 by the editors of a cooking website and republished in almost the same words by a national newspaper in the summer of 2024. Here roasted eggplant, kapya pepper and tomato are cooked briefly in a pan; the reason given for the recipe is to prepare the eggplant with less oil, without frying it. Three eggplants, two kapya peppers, two green village peppers and two tomatoes are roasted; the onion is not roasted but sliced for salad and sautéed with two finely chopped cloves of garlic in two tablespoons of olive oil until it has softened well and changed color. The tomatoes are added first and turned for a minute or two, then the eggplant cut into large cubes and the finely diced peppers go in, and the mixture, seasoned with salt and black pepper, is cooked with the lid on over low heat for two or three minutes. A bowl of parsley is added just before the pan comes off the heat; at serving, vinegar or lemon juice and a little olive oil are drizzled over as desired. The first publication does not tie the dish to any region; the newspaper, by contrast, presents it as a traditional dish of the Amasya region, saying that it can be eaten both hot and cold and is therefore popular in summer.

These recipes move away from the plain mixture in the book and bring çullama closer to a cooked dish made with roasted vegetables. What all of them share is that roasted eggplant, tomato and pepper are the main ingredients and that the dish can be eaten warm or cold. In the book the oil is one tea glass; in recipes that involve sautéing, the oil is used to cook the onion and peppers. It is also notable that while the book speaks only of vegetable oil, all the home recipes examined choose olive oil. This variety shows that çullama is a dish that does not fit a single mold and has taken shape in home kitchens.

Its Place at the Table

Çullama is a dish of summer and early autumn, when eggplants are plentiful. On hot days it can be eaten with fresh bread as a cooling plate, but on Amasya tables where lamb predominates, its known use is as a meze eaten often beside meat dishes. The smokiness of the fire, the sweetness of the tomato and the sharpness of onion and garlic come together; the mixture, balanced with oil and seasoning, reflects the region's plain but substantial taste. That eggplants, peppers and tomatoes grown in home gardens are used together also ties the dish to the region's orchard and garden culture.

Çullama is not among the first dishes that come to mind when Amasya's main dishes are listed. Among the region's famous foods, stuffed broad beans (baklalı dolma), keşkek, toyga soup, okra with meat, eggplant pehli and Amasya çörek usually come to the fore. Çullama remains in their shadow, yet it appears in compilations that list regional dishes; there eggplant çullama is presented as a meze known in other regions as eggplant paste or eggplant salad, eaten especially beside meat dishes.

Eggplant in Amasya Cuisine

To understand çullama one has to look at the place of eggplant in Amasya cuisine. In the vegetable and meat dishes of the book, eggplant appears in several forms. In most of these dishes it is peeled in the style called "dalgır" or "alacalı" (striped): a strip of skin is peeled and a strip left on, giving a striped look. The English text of the book also explains this method separately, as leaving one strip of the eggplant peeled and one unpeeled. Şıngır kebab, eggplant pehli, eggplant silkme and eggplant oturtma are prepared in this way. In çullama, by contrast, the eggplant is roasted whole over the embers and then peeled completely, so striped peeling is not done.

The best known of these is the şıngır kebab. The recipe uses 1.5 kilos of cubed lamb, 1 kilo of slender eggplants and half a kilo of sweet green peppers. The eggplant is peeled in stripes, cut into rings and left in salted water for twenty minutes. The meat is salted, then threaded onto the şıngır skewers, one eggplant and one piece of meat in turn. The wood fire is left until it burns down to embers, the skewers are placed on the device called the şıngır and cooked by turning it by hand. The green peppers are roasted over fire, laid over the cooked kebab and steeped for fifteen minutes in a tepoşlu, a kind of lidded copper pan. This record shows that eggplant cooked over fire and roasted pepper are used together in Amasya cuisine; in çullama the same two vegetables are prepared by the same method, this time without meat.

Two recipes in the vegetable section of the book show the place of eggplant in everyday home cooking. For eggplant silkme, a kilo of eggplants is peeled in the dalgır style, cut into rings and fried; it is put into a pot with a head of onion sautéed in oil and a tea glass of bulgur. The dish is not stirred with a spoon; the pot is shaken with a jolt, and it is cooked over low heat with only a little liquid. The name of the dish most likely comes from this shaking movement. This last point is an inference, since the book does not explain the name. For eggplant oturtma, four medium eggplants are peeled in stripes and cut into rings, salted to draw out their juice and then fried. Meatballs the size of an eggplant ring are made from minced meat; they are arranged in the pot one eggplant and one meatball in turn, topped with long green peppers fried in oil and tomato, and left to cook on their own over low heat. In both recipes the eggplant is fried first; in çullama the oil is added after the fire, to the roasted vegetables.

Eggplant pehli holds a place of its own at the regional table. According to the recipe in the book, six eggplants are peeled in stripes, cut in three lengthwise and then in three crosswise, lightly fried in hot oil and arranged on a tray. Four tomatoes cut in rings are laid on top, a kilo of boiled mutton ribs is placed over them with its broth, salt and black pepper are added, and the dish is baked in the oven until the meat browns and the liquid is absorbed. In Amasya a guest who comes to stay the night is called an "ağır misafir" (esteemed guest) and is served a six-course table of toyka soup, whole meat, rice pilaf, sinisu böreği, okra and dessert. In summer, eggplant pehli takes the place of the whole meat at this table. The provisions prepared for those setting out on the pilgrimage, in their present form, consist of toyka soup, pehli or whole meat, pilaf, dates and zamzam water. These records show that eggplant has a place in Amasya not only in everyday food but also at the tables of hospitality and ceremony.

In 2022 pehli was registered as a designation of origin under the name Amasya Patlıcan Pehli. The application was made on 14 July 2021 by the Yeşilırmak Basin Development Union, the registration took place on 5 April 2022, and the province of Amasya was given as its geographical boundary. The recipe in the registration document differs somewhat from the one in the book. One and a half kilos of eggplant go with one and a half kilos of lamb; the eggplants, peeled in strips, are cut into three and then lengthwise into rectangles, left for about an hour in a mixture of salt and milk and water in equal parts, washed and dried, and fried in sunflower oil until they turn pink. The boiled lamb is placed on the eggplants arranged on a tray, a glass of meat broth is poured over, and the tray, garnished with slices of green pepper and tomato, is baked in an oven at 180 degrees for about twenty minutes. The document also records that the dish is usually served on special days and at invitations, that it should not be stirred much while cooking and the eggplants should not be crushed, and that it should be served hot. The same eggplant becomes, in pehli, a dish for the invitation table baked with lamb, and in çullama a plain meze roasted over embers.

The book also includes dishes such as eggplant pilaf (made by adding water and rice to diced fried eggplant), a dish of dried eggplant prepared with coarse wheat and minced meat and topped with garlic yoghurt (dried squash is made the same way), and a cilbir made with pickled eggplant. For the dried eggplant dish, the eggplants are peeled in stripes, quartered and hung on a string to dry. In the pickle cilbir, the pickled eggplant is soaked in water to remove excess salt and vinegar, cut into rings a finger thick, cooked with sautéed onion and tomato and served warm or cold. Eggplant that is dried or pickled shows that the summer crop was carried into winter. Çullama, by contrast, is made with fresh eggplant in summer and is not kept.

Its Trace in the Records

Tracing the history of çullama in Amasya back through documents does not seem possible for now. The city's Ottoman-period Islamic court registers also contain narh records, which fixed the official prices of goods sold in the market. A study of the narh lists in Amasya register no. 15, covering the years 1663-1665, shows that the only vegetable in these lists is garlic: in the narh of August 1665 a kıyye of garlic was priced at 5 akçe, the cheapest item on the list. The same lists contain raisins, misket and yumrucuk grapes, olives, figs, apricots, dried plums, honey, pekmez and şıra tarhanası, but eggplant does not appear. This does not mean that eggplant was not grown or eaten in Amasya in those years; narh was kept only for goods on which an official price was set. But no early record specific to the city concerning the dish itself or its main ingredient emerges from this source.

In recent times the protection of regional dishes has proceeded mainly through geographical indication registrations. A nutrition study that searched the records of the Turkish Patent and Trademark Office in the summer of 2025 identified fifteen registered products belonging to Amasya cuisine. In the group of dishes and soups are Amasya keşkek, Amasya baklalı dolma, Amasya quince galle, Amasya okra with meat, Amasya eggplant pehli, Amasya toyga soup, Amasya sıkma tarhana and Merzifon keşkek; in the group of pastries and desserts are the twisted Amasya çörek, Amasya çörek, Amasya kaypak or piruhi, Amasya yağlı, Amasya yanuç, the Unutma Beni dessert and walnut-and-honey baklava. Eggplant çullama is not on this list. Among eggplant dishes, pehli is the only one protected by registration.

Other efforts to document regional dishes are also under way in Amasya. Public institutions, the municipality, the university and researchers are identifying and recording dishes at risk of being forgotten; pastırmalı kuşekmeği, kabak kabuğu kavurması, soğan mıhlaması, mayasız and hamursuz are counted among them, and these dishes were assessed by sensory analysis in a study published in 2023. Çullama is not mentioned in this list either. The reason is most likely that the dish has not been forgotten and is still made in homes; in current writings that list regional dishes, çullama appears as a living dish.

Çullama within Amasya Cuisine

Geographically, Amasya lies where Central Anatolia meets the Black Sea, and traces of both cuisines are found there. According to the book, the cuisine of this city, which served as a school for princes in the Ottoman period, reflects the table culture of a place that was for long the capital of many states and has a cultural accumulation of about 7,500 years. The book's foreword says that cuisine holds a value of its own within this accumulation and that the regional dishes were brought together to serve as a reference, especially for housewives. The book also makes a striking claim: that many recipes in the cookbooks of other provinces were taken from the Amasya culinary archive with a letter or two changed. This claim belongs to the compilers of the book and requires independent verification; but it shows the value the city places on its own cuisine.

Academic studies of the regional cuisine note that Amasya stands out for its pastries, namely Amasya çörek, yanuç and işkefe böreği, for keşkek baked in a distinctive jar in a stone oven, for okra, for toyga soup and for baklalı dolma, made by wrapping a filling of dried broad beans in vine leaves. Baklalı dolma is described as a registered and award-winning regional dish. Within this wide inheritance çullama is one of the plainest recorded recipes. That the book was prepared to protect the regional dishes from being forgotten and to pass them to future generations makes it meaningful that a separate page was given to such a simple meze.

Chronology

1665: In the narh record of August 1665 in Amasya Islamic court register no. 15, garlic is the only vegetable listed, at 5 akçe per kıyye; eggplant does not appear on the list.

2010: The Governorship of Amasya publishes the bilingual book Amasya Mutfağı, edited by H. Harun Yörgüç; eggplant çullama appears in the "Specialities" section, on page 82.

2021: On 14 July the Yeşilırmak Basin Development Union applies for a geographical indication for Amasya Patlıcan Pehli.

2022: On 5 April Amasya Patlıcan Pehli is registered as a designation of origin.

2023: A study assessing forgotten Amasya dishes by sensory analysis is published; çullama is not counted among these dishes.

2024: A national newspaper publishes eggplant çullama with its recipe as a traditional summer dish of the Amasya region.

2026: A nutrition study examining fifteen geographically indicated products of Amasya cuisine is published; eggplant çullama is not among the registered products.

Bibliography

Academic studies

Official sources

Other sources

Online sources