Some desserts take their name from a tool used to make them, and the name itself says how they are prepared. Kalbur tatlısı is one of these. It is named after the sieve (kalbur) on which pieces of dough are pressed to take their pattern, and in Amasya the same sweet is also called halbur tatlısı. Small enough to fit in the palm, filled with walnuts and soaked in syrup, it is prepared by the trayful for weddings, religious holidays and other large gatherings. It is known in other Anatolian cities as well, but in Amasya it is made with its own proportions and habits. Known across Turkish cuisine as kalburabastı, the sweet carries details in Amasya, in both name and recipe, that belong to the region.

Name and Meaning

A kalbur is a sieve with large holes or widely spaced wires, used to separate coarse grains. The Turkish Language Association gives the word's origin as Arabic ġirbāl; the tool that gave the sweet its name is thus called by a loanword that settled in Turkish long ago. The word kalburabastı, "pressed on the sieve", comes from shaping the dough by pressing it against that sieve. The dictionary of the Turkish Language Association describes the sweet as a piece of dough shaped like a meringue, flattened, filled with walnut kernel and butter in the middle, baked in the oven, and, once baked, covered with cold sugar syrup. The raised, porous surface left by the wires of the sieve is the sweet's most recognizable feature. Across the country the same sweet goes by names such as hurma, halbur tatlısı and Aksaray şeker böreği. Abroad, similar sweets are known as hurmašice or hurme; in Bosnia and Herzegovina the name hurmašice is used, and elsewhere in the former Yugoslavia urmašice.

The name hurma, "date", has to do with the sweet's size and shape. In the first printed cookbook, dated 1844, the dough is cut "to the size of a date"; in the Şanlıurfa recipe, too, pieces the size of a walnut are given "the shape of a date". There is no date fruit in the sweet. It can be supposed that the name comes from likening the elongated, oval pieces, each about the size of a date, to the fruit; the sources do not state this comparison outright and mention the date only as a measure and a shape, so this is an inference.

In Amasya the sweet is most often written kalbur tatlısı, and in some accounts kalbura bastı or kalburabastı. The form halbur is the local pronunciation of kalbur, and the same name is used in Şanlıurfa. A food and drink guide introducing Amasya's dishes lists halbur tatlısı among the region's own foods, alongside çatal çorba, helle çorbası, toyga çorbası, cilbir, bakla dolması, hengel, gömlek kadayıfı, zerdali gallesi and vişneli ekmek. When Amasya's local desserts are listed, kalbur tatlısı appears among names such as dene hasudası, kuymak, yuka tatlısı, ayva gailesi, zerdali gailesi, gömlek kadayıfı, höşmerim, gelin parmağı, şeker böreği, unutma beni and vişneli ekmek. This list appears in the regional cuisine section of the province's culture and tourism records.

Kalburabastı in Written Sources

The written history of the sweet reaches back to Ottoman cookbooks. Melceü't-Tabbâhîn, written by Mehmed Kâmil, a teacher at the Imperial School of Medicine (Mekteb-i Tıbbiye-i Adliye-i Şâhâne), and printed by lithography in 1844, is counted among the first printed Turkish cookbooks, and it contains a recipe for this sweet. In the book the sweet is not called kalburabastı but appears under the name hurma. The original text of the recipe reads: "Tarîk-i tabhı: Yarım kıyye miktarı dakîk-i hâstan eleyip vasat kepçe ile bir kepçe erimiş rûgan-ı sâde ve kabul ettiği kadar durulmuş küllü su ve az tuz ile gereği gibi yoğurup el ile oklava gibi uzatıp hurma miktarı bıçak ile kestikten sonra tek tek ince çubuklu sepet üstünde yuvarlayıp kızgın yağda kızartıldıkça kepçe ile çıkarıp kıvamlıca kaynar asel veya şeker içine atıp bir miktar durdukta yine çıkarıp tabağa nizamiyle istif ve tenâvül buyrula."

In plain language the recipe says this: half a kıyye of the best sifted flour is kneaded with a medium ladle of melted clarified butter, as much ash-clarified water as it will take and a little salt, stretched by hand like a rolling pin, cut with a knife to the size of a date, and rolled one by one over a basket of thin rods. The pieces are fried in hot fat, dropped into boiling honey or sugar syrup, left for a while, and then arranged in order on a plate. In the text dakîk-i hâs is fine flour, the finest and whitest; rûgan-ı sâde is clarified butter; and asel is honey. The kıyye is a weight of about 1.282 kilograms, so the half kıyye of flour the recipe calls for comes to roughly 640 grams. It can be supposed that the ash-clarified water in the recipe is clear lye water drawn off after the ash has settled, used to give the dough some crispness in a period when baking powder was unknown; the recipe does not explain its purpose, so this is an inference.

The desserts of Melceü't-Tabbâhîn are today a subject of study in their own right in gastronomy research. Osman Güldemir, who adapted the book for the present day, gave the recipes names that suit their contents in his 2010 master's thesis, since the original text has no headings, and grouped the desserts in three classes: dough desserts, milk-based and light desserts with confections, and fruit desserts. In this classification the hurma recipe appears under the name "kalbura bastı" in the group "kadayıfs, lokmas and other dough desserts", twenty-one sweets that include lokma, semolina desserts, cookies and various kadayıfs. According to Abdullah Badem's 2024 assessment, based on this thesis and on Günay Kut and Turgut Kut's edition of the book, the desserts most widely eaten in Ottoman cuisine from the fifteenth to the eighteenth century were lokma, lalanga and kadayıf. It can be supposed that the old hurma recipe, fried in hot fat and dropped into syrup, stands close to this lokma family in its method; the sweet's later turn into an oven-baked, walnut-filled pastry is seen in today's regional recipes. Whether the hurma recipe appears in the English cookbook bearing the name of Turabi Efendi, printed in London in 1864 and drawing on the recipes of the same book, could not be checked by us.

Two differences stand out between this old recipe and today's Amasya recipe. The first is the cooking method. Mehmed Kâmil fries the dough, whereas in today's Amasya recipe the sweet is baked in the oven. The second is that walnuts are not mentioned in the old recipe; the dough is shaped on a basket of thin rods. The basic idea is nonetheless the same: small balls of dough are patterned by rolling them over the wired surface of a sieve or basket and are then brought together with syrup. In the Şanlıurfa recipe, too, the piece is said to be given the shape of a date. For this reason, calling the sweet hurma, halbur or kalbura bastı means giving the same sweet different names; they are not counted as separate desserts.

The Amasya Recipe

The recipe in the Amasya Governorship's book Amasya Mutfağı (Amasya Cuisine), also published on the national culture portal, prepares the sweet as follows. A well is made in the middle of the flour. Into this well go 200 grams of butter, two eggs, a pinch of salt, two spoonfuls of yogurt, a packet of vanilla and a packet of baking powder; a glass of walnuts is also part of the preparation. The amount of flour is not stated explicitly in the recipe; instead the consistency of the dough is given through a comparison: the dough is kneaded until it is as soft as an earlobe. Earlobe softness describes a dough that is neither stiff nor sticky and takes shape easily in the hand.

A piece the size of an egg is taken, walnut is placed in its centre, and the piece is shaped by turning it by hand on the back of the sieve. Here broken or crushed walnut is placed inside the dough; the dough wraps the walnut and takes its pattern wherever it touches the wired surface of the sieve. The pieces are arranged on a tray and baked at 150 degrees for 30 to 35 minutes. Because the heat is kept low, the dough ripens without browning, taking on a golden colour and cooking through. After baking, syrup that has been boiled and cooled is poured over the sweet. For the syrup, 1.5 kilograms of granulated sugar, one litre of water and the juice of half a lemon are used.

Another written version of the same recipe in circulation shows small but noteworthy differences. In this version a packet of margarine stands in place of the butter, and the oven heat is given as "medium" with no degrees; the flour is again left unmeasured as "enough for the ingredients", while the amounts of eggs, salt, yogurt, vanilla, baking powder, walnuts and syrup are the same. Placing walnut inside the egg-sized piece and shaping it on the sieve, baking it for 30 to 35 minutes and bringing it together with cold syrup also stay unchanged. The swap of butter and margarine between two versions of the same recipe may show that the choice of fat in home kitchens changed over time and from household to household; since no record shows which version is older, this is an inference.

Cold syrup over a hot sweet is a general rule of syrup desserts, and it holds for Amasya's kalbur tatlısı as well. The hot dough quickly absorbs the cold syrup, so the outside of the sweet does not turn soggy and fall apart while the syrup works its way inside. Part of the dough softens, while the hollows and ridges on the surface keep their crispness for a time. All the sources behind the Amasya recipe state that the syrup is cooled; there is no record of lukewarm syrup being used. This rule is not applied the same way in every region: in Aksaray's registered recipe the baked dough is first cooled to room temperature, and the syrup is poured once it has dropped to 35 degrees, that is, while lukewarm. In Amasya the quantity of syrup is also high: the proportion in the recipe shows that the sweet is thought of as a generously syruped dessert.

The Dough and the Pattern on the Surface

The ingredients of the Amasya recipe are simple but balanced. Butter gives the dough a short texture that crumbles easily; egg holds the dough together; yogurt and baking powder lighten it. Walnut, placed inside the dough, is an ingredient often seen in other desserts and pastries of Amasya cuisine. Amasya çöreği, one of the city's best-known pastries, is made with walnuts and poppy seed; yağlı also uses a mixture of fat, walnuts and poppy seed; and desserts such as unutma beni, yuka tatlısı and elma tatlısı are finished with walnuts. In this cuisine walnut is a common complement in the desserts and pastries made from local produce.

The pattern also has a practical side. Small hollows and ridges form in dough pressed onto the wired surface of a sieve or grater; these hollows hold the syrup and help it work into the dough without upsetting the sweetness of each bite. In this way ornament and function come together. That the sieve was, in the past, a kitchen tool found in almost every house must also have helped the sweet to spread; without the need for a special mould or device, the sweet was given its identity with a tool already at home. In some regions the coarse face of a grater or a strainer is used instead of a sieve. The basket of thin rods in the 1844 recipe is also a wired or ridged surface doing the same job; although the name of the tool changed from region to region and from period to period, the idea of a textured surface leaving its mark on the dough stayed constant.

Forms in Other Regions

The sweet is not counted as Amasya's alone; it is made in its own way in many parts of Anatolia. In Aksaray the same sweet is known as Aksaray şeker böreği and is protected by a geographical indication. The application made by Aksaray Municipality on 26 July 2021 was registered as a designation of origin on 20 April 2022, with protection running from the date of application. The Aksaray method uses tail fat, butter, margarine, wheat flour, yogurt, egg, baking powder and walnut kernels; the oval dough is shaped by pressing it on a sieve, which is why its surface is porous and why the sweet is also known as kalburabastı. In Aksaray the sweet is offered at betrothal visits, mevlit gatherings, weddings and religious holidays; because it is filling, it is also often eaten at iftar and sahur during Ramadan. The registration document traces the sweet's history back to Ottoman cuisine.

The production method in the registration document differs clearly from the Amasya recipe at several points. In Aksaray margarine is melted, butter and part of the flour are added, and the flour is toasted until it turns pinkish; tail fat melted in a separate pan is added to this mixture, which is left to cool. Then, together with yogurt, egg, the rest of the flour, walnut kernels and baking powder, a dough as soft as an earlobe is kneaded, as in Amasya. This stage of toasted flour and tail fat is absent from Amasya's plain butter dough. Nor is the walnut placed inside the piece as in Amasya; it is mixed into the dough. The dough is divided into about twenty-five walnut-sized pieces, pressed on the sieve into flat ovals half a centimetre thick, and baked at 180 degrees until cracks form on the surface and it browns. The syrup is boiled from 300 grams of sugar, 400 millilitres of water and a few drops of lemon; the sweet is served after soaking up the syrup for at least half an hour. According to the document, every stage of production must take place within the provincial borders of Aksaray, and a board made up of one expert each from the municipality and the provincial directorates of agriculture and of culture and tourism carries out an inspection once a year.

The recipe known in Şanlıurfa as halbur tatlısı differs markedly from Amasya's. Flour, salt and baking powder are poured over hot, sizzling fat and kneaded first with a spoon and then by hand, like çiğ köfte; a well is opened in the middle, two eggs, vinegar or lemon juice and a little water are added, and a firm dough is made. Walnut-sized pieces are rolled by pressing them with a finger on the back of a halbur or a strainer and are given the shape of a date. The pieces are fried in oil and dropped into a syrup of sugar, water and lemon juice prepared and cooled beforehand. This recipe looks closer to Mehmed Kâmil's 1844 hurma recipe than the Amasya one does.

The Sivas method uses 250 grams of fat, a tablespoon of yogurt, one egg, vanilla, three glasses of flour, baking powder and a glass of coarsely broken walnuts; the dough rests in the refrigerator for half an hour, the walnuts are added afterwards, and the pieces are pressed on the coarse side of a grater to give them an elliptical shape. The sweet is baked at 180 degrees for about 40 minutes and brought together with cold syrup; before serving, one waits until the syrup has been fully absorbed. The main differences between the recipes of the four regions are these: in Şanlıurfa the dough is fried, while in Amasya, Aksaray and Sivas it is baked; in Amasya the walnut is placed inside the piece, while in Aksaray and Sivas it is mixed into the dough; Amasya's dough contains butter and yogurt, while Aksaray also uses tail fat and toasted flour; and in Amasya cold syrup is poured over the hot sweet, while in Aksaray lukewarm syrup is poured over the cooled sweet.

Its Place at the Amasya Table

Within Amasya's tradition of syrup desserts, kalbur tatlısı is a heavier, more filling sweet. The city's desserts include yuka tatlısı, unutma beni, dene hasudası, quince and apricot gailesi, gömlek kadayıfı and vişneli ekmek. Yuka tatlısı is made with dried thin sheets of yufka and walnuts and is never without its syrup. Unutma beni is made by soaking stale whole-wheat bread with grape molasses, sugar and walnuts, and is registered with a geographical indication. Vişneli ekmek comes from slices of bread fried in butter meeting sweetened sour cherries. Walnut and syrup are shared by almost all of these desserts; kalbur tatlısı is the example that offers these shared elements in the form of a pastry that can be held and eaten by hand.

Amasya cuisine thinks of the table not only as a place to be fed but also as a place of meeting and sharing. Records of the regional cuisine note that dishes such as keşkek, bakla dolması and toyga çorbası are prepared for weddings, religious holidays and large invitations. Because kalbur tatlısı is made in small pieces and can be arranged on a tray, it suits such crowded tables. Its being offered in Aksaray at ceremonies such as weddings, betrothal visits and mevlit gatherings points to a similar use; some general sources also count kalburabastı among the sweets prepared for the Ramadan and Sacrifice holidays. Since there is no detailed written record that documents this use directly for Amasya, the account is built on local table tradition and on practice in neighbouring regions. No record of this sweet could be found in Hüseyin Hüsâmeddîn's Amasya Tarihi or in Osman Fevzi Olcay's Amasya Hâtıraları either.

Preparing the sweet is seldom one person's work. Kneading the dough, picking the walnuts, filling each piece and turning it on the sieve is a long task, shared before a wedding or a holiday among the women of the family and the neighbourhood who come together for it. In such preparations one woman kneads, another fills the walnuts, another gives the pattern. This shared labour turns the sweet from a product served on a tray into an occasion for gathering. A compilation on the regional cuisine relates that in Amasya aesthetics come first at every ceremony, and that hospitality is offered with a smiling face, accompanied by music and as a presentation; the arrangement of kalbur tatlısı on the tray fits this outlook. In Amasya it is traditionally important for the host to find a guest for the table, to share the meal and to honour the guest with the order of the table and the offering; even the table for an honoured overnight guest (ağır misafir) holds six dishes, one of which is a dessert.

Measures and Practical Points

The density of the syrup varies from region to region. In the Amasya recipe 1.5 kilograms of granulated sugar and half a lemon go into one litre of water; this means sugar weighing about one and a half times the water, which gives a rather thick syrup close to the consistency of honey. The Şanlıurfa recipe uses three glasses of water, three glasses of sugar and half a glass of lemon juice; equal volumes of water and sugar mean a runnier syrup in this recipe. In Aksaray's registered recipe 300 grams of sugar go into 400 millilitres of water; the sugar weighs less than the water, which makes it the lightest syrup of the three recipes. Lemon keeps the syrup from crystallizing and balances the taste; in this respect the recipes resemble one another.

The consistency of the dough decides the success of the sweet. Earlobe softness describes a dough that is neither too slack nor stiff; Aksaray's registration document gives the same measure as "earlobe softness, not too stiff". A stiff dough takes up little syrup and ends up dry, while a dough that is too soft does not hold its shape on the sieve. The amount of fat also makes the dough short and crumbly. Resting the dough briefly, as in the Sivas recipe, lets the fat firm up and makes the dough easier to work; this is a practice not stated in the Amasya recipe but found in the recipe of another region.

Pieces of egg size, close to one another in size, ensure both even baking and even absorption of syrup. If the walnut is chopped too fine it scatters in the dough; if left too coarse, closing the piece becomes difficult. Choosing a low heat such as 150 degrees lets the walnut and dough cook slowly. After baking, the sweets are brought together with the syrup while still hot, before being taken off the tray; serving begins once the syrup has been fully absorbed.

Today

Food guides introducing the region usually list yuka tatlısı and unutma beni as Amasya's leading desserts; kalbur tatlısı, for its part, appears in the province's official lists of local desserts. Kalbur tatlısı is not among Amasya's products with a geographical indication. The desserts protected by geographical indication in the province include Amasya unutma beni tatlısı, registered on 20 November 2023 on the application of Ziyaret Municipality, and Amasya cevizli ballı baklavası (walnut and honey baklava), whose registration was announced in January 2023; with the latter, the number of the province's geographically indicated products was declared to have risen to eighteen. That the similar sweet in Aksaray has been registered is also a reminder that kalburabastı is too widespread in Anatolia to be tied to a single region. Among the Amasya Governorship's publications compiling local dishes, besides the book Amasya Mutfağı there is also Amasya Yemekleri (Amasya Dishes), written by Elif Korkmazel, edited by Emine Sarıkaya and published in 2008 in the governorship's cultural publications series; whether kalbur tatlısı is included in this second book could not be checked.

Chronology

1844: Mehmed Kâmil's cookbook Melceü't-Tabbâhîn is published by lithography; it contains a written recipe for the sweet under the name hurma.

1864: An English book of Turkish cookery bearing the name of Turabi Efendi, drawing on the recipes of Melceü't-Tabbâhîn, is printed in London.

2008: The Amasya Governorship publishes the book Amasya Yemekleri in its cultural publications series.

2010: In his thesis adapting the recipes of Melceü't-Tabbâhîn for the present day, Osman Güldemir classifies the hurma recipe among the dough desserts under the name "kalbura bastı".

2021: On 26 July, Aksaray Municipality applies for a geographical indication for Aksaray şeker böreği.

2022: On 20 April, Aksaray şeker böreği is registered as a designation of origin.

2023: The registration of Amasya cevizli ballı baklavası is announced in January; Amasya unutma beni tatlısı is registered on 20 November.

Bibliography

Academic studies

Official sources

Other sources

Online sources