Sirkeli ciğer, or liver cooked with vinegar, is one of the offal dishes listed among the meat dishes in Amasya's official inventory of regional foods. It takes its name from the way the liver is brought together with vinegar during cooking. The regional cuisine list issued by the Amasya Provincial Directorate of Culture and Tourism places it alongside bakla dolması, etli bamya, keşkek, ciğer sarması, göbek dolması, madımak, mıhlama, mumbar, işkembe, pastırmalı pancar, patlıcan pehli, pastırma pağallemesi, pirpirim and sulu köfte. What sets the dish apart is that the liver is softened in a mixture of vinegar and salt and then cooked over low heat; this is also what distinguishes Amasya's liver from liver recipes elsewhere.

In Anatolian cooking, offal is sometimes everyday fare and sometimes the food of holiday and sacrificial tables. In Amasya, liver, lung, tripe, mumbar and caul fat are used as part of the household kitchen and the order of the table, as much as mutton is. Plain as the dish itself is, a long chain stands behind it: the sheep grazing on the summer pasture, the butcher in the market, the vinegar jar kept at home, and the knowledge of the housewife who brings them together. To place sirkeli ciğer correctly, it helps first to look at the links of this chain.

The Ground of Amasya Cuisine

The food culture of Amasya cannot be separated from the city's long history and its ecology. Sources describing the regional cuisine note that the accumulated history and rich vegetation of the area are reflected in the kitchen. The gardens of the Yeşilırmak valley, the province's apples, sugar beet, poppy and sunflower are part of this ground, and molasses is made from the misket apple that has become identified with the region. Among vegetables, okra, beans, peppers, mallow, beet and the purslane known locally as pirpirim appear most often on the table. The meat used is mostly mutton; it is washed, coated in çemen paste and stored in winter to make keşkek or çemenli yemek.

The kitchen follows the calendar of the seasons. Preparation for winter dishes is made in summer, and foods dried in summer go into the pot in winter. In the daily routine two meals are usually eaten, one in the late morning (kuşluk) and one in the evening. For those working in the fields there is an in-between meal called ikindilik, and after the evening meal a further one, called yatsılık, is sometimes added. The fact that sources mention sirkeli ciğer especially as an evening dish fits this pattern.

The book Amasya Mutfağı, published as number 42 in the Amasya Governorship's cultural publications, is among the most comprehensive compilations of this cuisine. Its first edition appeared in October 2006 and its second in February 2010, with the text given in Turkish and English side by side. The teachers of food and beverage services at the Amasya Anatolian Girls' Vocational High School, housewives and cooks took part in preparing it. In the foreword, Governor M. Celalettin Lekesiz says that in presenting Amasya, a city with a history of seven and a half thousand years, it was thought necessary to describe its food culture as well. The history section of the book reminds the reader that Amasya long served as the capital of many peoples, that in the Ottoman period it worked as a kind of school for heirs to the throne and was therefore known as the City of Princes, and ties the cuisine to that line. The same section also gives examples: the cream cake eaten in the palace became vişneli ekmek in the hands of ordinary people, stale bread became the dessert unutma beni, and dried broad beans combined with meat gave rise to bakla dolması.

The tie between Amasya and the palace kitchen does not rest on tradition alone. Hüsameddin's biographical volumes record that el-Hâc İbrâhim Ağa of Amasya, son of Mehmed, entered the palace confectionery (helvahane) as a young man and trained there for years, rose to be steward of the cooks, and at the accession of Selim III became head cook of the imperial household. İbrâhim Ağa retired in 1218 (1803); his sons and grandsons came to be called the "Aşçızâdeler", the cook's family, and it was this family that built the Çöplüce Madrasa in Amasya. Hüsameddin writes that the madrasa was built of timber in 1234 (1818) by el-Hâc Mehmed Ağa of the Aşçızâde family, a member of the inner palace service. These records say nothing directly about sirkeli ciğer; but they document that there were men of Amasya who made careers in the palace kitchen, and that culinary knowledge could travel back and forth between the city and Istanbul.

Where the Liver Came From: Sheep, Butchers and the Market

The regional publications do not say which animal's liver is used for sirkeli ciğer. Even so, Amasya's pattern of animal husbandry points to sheep. Describing the Akdağ district, which covers the eastern part of the Amasya kaza, Hüsameddin says that the summer pasture of Akdağ, a mountain about twelve hundred metres high, is abundant, its winter quarters favourable, its water plentiful and its air very healthy, and that for this reason most of the sheep of the Amasya sanjak grazed there in summer. In the same place he adds that the butter, cheese and yoghurt of Akdağ were highly prized and famous throughout the Pontus region. The mutton and offal that reached the city's tables were the product of flocks moving between this summer pasture and the winter quarters.

Within the city, the link between these flocks and the table was the butcher. According to a study compiling the daily life of the Armenians of Amasya in the Ottoman period, based on Kapriel H. Simonian's memory book of Amasya published in Venice in 1966, the butchers of the market slaughtered cattle or sheep every day except during Lent, so that fresh meat was easy to find; this is also why meat weighed so heavily in the local diet. The same compilation records that cattle, sheep, goats and buffalo were kept in the area, as well as chickens, turkeys, ducks and geese.

Osman Fevzi Olcay's Amasya Hâtıraları, listing the market of the early twentieth century shop by shop, names the butchers too. At the head of the first street leading from Selağzı to the Gümüşlü Mosque, in the second shop after that of the greengrocer Feyzullah's Ali Efendi, sat the Armenian butcher Kirkor. In Selağzı, right beside the Eğri Mosque, was the butcher's shop of İmamzade Hulusi and Tevfik Efendi; Olcay notes that in his own day it was being used as a barber's salon by Lütfü Usta. After the Vakıfhan, past the street of the Kaçoni school, came another butcher's shop, followed by the famous bakery of Buusoğlu. There was a butcher at the left corner of the Sinan Bath, the shop of the butcher Hamdi Ağa stood right beside the door of the bath facing the women's section, and the "butcher's shop with the well" of Nimet and Enver Efendi marked the end of this part of Gümüşlü. That the butchers stood in the same row as greengrocers, bakers, yoghurt sellers and kebab shops shows that liver entered homes as part of the everyday shopping of the market.

Offal at the Old Amasya Table

The name sirkeli ciğer does not appear in old records, but the place of offal in Amasya's cuisine goes back a long way. The compilation based on Simonian's memory book describes in detail how Armenian families of Amasya in the Ottoman period made use of offal. For tripe soup, the tripe of a sheep or lamb was scraped and chopped, boiled, then boiled again in fresh salted water, and hot oil with red pepper was poured over it. Mumbar was made by filling the intestines of a sheep or lamb with a little fatty minced meat, the pounded wheat called gorgod, plenty of onion, garlic and spices, tying them with string every ten centimetres and steaming them in salted water.

For head and trotters, the sheep's head and feet were singed in a blacksmith's forge and cleaned, left in water for a whole day, then placed in an earthenware pot with plenty of water and left overnight in an oven that had just been put out. In the morning the bones were picked out and the meat chopped and brought to the table, and each person added breadcrumbs, crushed garlic and vinegar to his own plate. This habit of finishing offal with garlic and vinegar matches the home versions of sirkeli ciğer described today in a striking way.

Liver appears mostly within holiday and wedding dishes. For the whole stuffed lamb made at holidays and weddings, a sheep or lamb was slaughtered and skinned, its organs removed and the carcass washed and salted. Chopped liver and lung were mixed with rice, currants, pine nuts and spices and stuffed into the animal's belly, the belly was sewn up, and the lamb was put in the oven with water in a copper tray, being turned now and then as it cooked and basted with its own fat. In a smaller version only the belly of the sheep was used, and the liver chopped for the stuffing was first fried and then mixed with rice and spices; there was also a version made without rice. Lung, heart and liver were grilled over the fire, like meat placed between the two wire grids used for grilling. These recipes belong to the same family as göbek dolması and ciğer sarması, which are named separately in Amasya cuisine today, and show that liver has long had a place in the city at both everyday and festive tables.

Sirkeli Ciğer Among the Offal Dishes

The official list also shows the breadth of the cuisine. Among soups it names çatal çorba, sakala çarpan, toyga çorbası, cilbir, helle çorbası, kesme ibik çorbası and yarma çorbası. Among desserts are dene hasudası, kuymak, yuka tatlısı, ayva gailesi, elma tatlısı, fırın sütlaç, gelin parmağı, gömlek kadayıfı, kalbur tatlısı, höşmerim, peluza, şeker böreği, unutma beni, vişneli ekmek and zerdali gailesi. On the pastry side there are Amasya çöreği, yağlı, kabak kavuklu pilav, bişi, cırıtka, döndürme, ekmek aşı, eli böğründe, haşhaşlı cevizli çörek, hengel, kıymasız mantı, kaypak, patlıcanlı pilav, sini suböreği, tepsi böreği, yakasal böreği and yanuç. Within this wide range, sirkeli ciğer belongs to the group of meat dishes.

Several dishes made with offal stand out in Amasya's regional list. Mumbar is made by stuffing sheep's intestine with a bulgur filling seasoned with parsley, tomato paste, black pepper and salt; it is cooked in a cauldron together with tripe and served in pieces two or three centimetres long. Göbek dolması is a laborious dish made with rib meat, caul fat, liver, pine nuts for stuffing, currants, parsley, rice and spices; its opening is sewn shut and it goes through three separate stages of cooking, first fried in oil, then boiled in water and finally put in the oven, and because of its heaviness it is eaten mostly in winter. Ciğer sarması is also named separately in the same list. Sirkeli ciğer is the plainest of them, because apart from the liver it is built only from vinegar, salt and fire.

The meat dishes section of the Amasya Mutfağı book contains nine recipes: keşkek, mumbar with tripe, pastırma gağelleme, yoğurtlu akciğer kavurma, bütün et, hamur yahnisi, ayva gallesi, şıngır kebabı and kipe. Sirkeli ciğer is not among these nine, but a dish from the liver family, yoğurtlu akciğer kavurma, is. In this recipe a sheep's lung is cut into pieces the size of dice; the pieces can be cut by hand or put through a meat grinder fitted with a coarse-holed strainer. The lung is fried in oil, stirred with a wooden spoon, a small cup of hot water is added, and the pot is covered and left to soften over low heat. When it reaches the right consistency, salt is added, the dish is transferred to a serving plate, garlic yoghurt is poured over it and it is garnished with red pepper flakes. What the two dishes share is an approach of cooking offal slowly over low heat so as to soften it; in the yoghurt version a little water does this work, in the vinegar version the vinegar does.

How the Dish Is Prepared

Sources describing the regional foods give the recipe for sirkeli ciğer as follows. The liver is first cleaned of its membranes and sinews and then cut. A mixture of vinegar and salt is prepared in a separate bowl, and the cleaned and chopped liver is added to it. The liver is cooked together with the mixture and fried over low heat until it has completely absorbed the liquid. According to these sources, the vinegar is the element that lets the liver cook better and more tenderly. Liver is a meat that hardens easily when cooked at too high a heat or for too long; cooking it in an acidic medium over low heat serves to prevent this hardening. The resulting dish is found to be softer and tastier than classic liver recipes.

The simplicity of the recipe is striking. There are no stages such as making a sauce or using many spices; the real work lies in preparing the ingredient and in controlling the fire. Clearing the liver well of its membranes and sinews determines both its texture and its taste. That the mixture is cooked until it has absorbed its liquid shows that the dish is prepared to a fried-and-reduced consistency, unlike a watery stew.

The effect of vinegar on the texture of meat is a subject that food science has also examined. A 2023 study by Kübra Ünal, Ali Samet Babaoğlu and Mustafa Karakaya recalls that acidic marinades lower the pH of meat, loosening the muscle structure, speeding up protein breakdown by cathepsin enzymes and increasing the conversion of collagen into gelatine. In the beef that the researchers tested with chokeberry, grape and hawthorn vinegars, grape vinegar gave the most tender result, and vinegar marinades also reduced cooking loss. These findings were obtained on muscle meat and have not been tested separately on liver; still, they suggest that the softening role which household knowledge in Amasya assigns to vinegar has a scientific counterpart.

Among the home practices described under the same name there are also forms that depart from this recipe. According to these, the liver is cut into small, even pieces and fried quickly over high heat, in some households dusted with flour beforehand, and while still hot it is tossed with crushed garlic, vinegar, salt and often red pepper flakes. It is said that as the hot liver absorbs the vinegar the dish takes on a sour taste and an appetising aroma, and that the sharpness of the garlic is softened by the acidity of the vinegar. In this method the dish is served lukewarm or at room temperature, with chopped parsley and sliced onion. That this variant matches the recipe in the regional publications has not been verified; it is noted here separately because it is described as a practice alive in home kitchens. The fact that garlic vinegar was known as a separate preparation in the old cuisine of Amasya is worth noting, as it hints at the roots of this variant: according to the compilation based on Simonian, garlic was pounded with salt in a mortar, vinegar and hot pepper were added, and if it was to be served alongside meat dishes, yoghurt was mixed in as well.

The Role of Vinegar

Vinegar is one of the oldest ingredients of Turkish cooking. In Kaşgarlı Mahmud's Dîvânu Lugâti't-Türk the word sirke appears in its present form, and the verb "sirkëlë-" is used in the sense of adding vinegar to a mixture. The work also describes a "Turkish vinegar" called mandu: made by adding dry wine to grape must fermented in a jar, it is praised by Kaşgarlı as the finest of vinegars. Nursel Demirden's study of the Dîvân notes that vinegar was used in Ottoman cooking as a flavouring and aromatic, and that today vinegar is made not only from grapes but also from fruits such as hawthorn, pear and mulberry. As the same study relates, the white film of mould that forms on the surface of the liquid when vinegar and pickles are made is called "bar" in Anatolia.

The standing of vinegar at the table finds an echo in religious tradition as well. A hadith narrated by Muslim relates that when the Prophet was told that the only relish in the house was vinegar, he asked for it and said, "What an excellent relish vinegar is." In Rumi's Masnavi, too, vinegar and liver meet in the same couplet: "If the vinegar must find its way to the liver, tell it to become oxymel with sugar." The line reflects the language of old medicine, which linked the liver and bile with vinegar; it cannot be presented as the origin of the sirkeli ciğer recipe, but it is a reminder that vinegar and liver have long been named side by side in the cultural world of Anatolia.

The regional publications do not answer such questions as which fruit the vinegar used in sirkeli ciğer is made from or whether it is homemade; nothing definite can therefore be said about the kind of vinegar in the recipe. Amasya's sources of vinegar, however, are clear. The compilation based on Simonian relates that some twenty varieties of grape were grown in the city in the Ottoman period, that pickles were kept in earthenware jars, that green peppers, cucumbers and green tomatoes were pickled in a mixture of brine and vinegar, and that in some pickles grape pomace was used together with vinegar. Many of the soups and vegetable dishes in the same compilation are finished with vinegar before serving; on fast days Armenian families used a mixture of red pepper and vinegar in place of oil.

Today Amasya's misket apple, which carries a geographical indication, is used in many products, from cologne and apple tea to molasses and vinegar. In Gümüşhacıköy, vinegar-making begun by Birsel Bayrak with a recipe learned from her mother, because she could not bear to see the apples in her orchard rot, has grown into a business producing an average of sixty tonnes of vinegar a year from apples, cornelian cherries, strawberries and hawthorn; the producer says her vinegar takes a year to mature. Apple vinegar has also entered Amasya's registered recipes: the dough of Amasya Cevizli Ballı Baklava, registered as a designation of origin on 23 December 2022, contains apple vinegar, and the registration text attributes the baklava's crispness to it. This does not prove that apple vinegar is used in sirkeli ciğer; but it shows that in an Amasya kitchen cooking this dish, the most readily available vinegars were apple and grape vinegar.

What vinegar adds to the dish matters as much for the cooking process as for the taste. The acid softens the texture of the liver and allows it to be cooked for a long time over low heat; the sources' finding that the liver is more tender than in classic recipes is related to this. The sources do not state which animal's liver is used. Since sheep's lung appears in the lung recipe of the Amasya Mutfağı book, mutton dominates the regional cuisine, and Hüsameddin describes the sheep flocks of the sanjak together with the Akdağ pasture, it may be supposed that sheep come first, but this is an inference and has not been confirmed by the sources.

Its Place at the Table

The statement repeated in the sources about sirkeli ciğer is that the people of the region like it enough to eat it at any meal of the day. Even so, it is most often served at the evening meal, with salad and bread. That it comes to the table with bread and salad suggests that it is less a showy feast dish than a filling and quickly prepared option of the household table. In some accounts the dish also appears as a refreshing plate in the summer months and as a meze beside rakı; this use is not separately documented in the regional publications.

At the Amasya table, the place of liver changes with the kind of table being set. At the heavy guest table (ağır misafir sofrası) laid for a visitor to the region, there are six dishes: toyka soup, bütün et, rice pilaf, sinisu börek, okra and a dessert. In summer, patlıcan pehlisi takes the place of the bütün et; the dessert is one of tırtıl baklava, kuymak or gömlek kadayıfı. Liver does not appear at this table. At the Feast of Sacrifice, on the other hand, bakla dolması, meat pilaf, baklava, toyga and ciğer kavurma are prepared for guests, and some of what is prepared is sent to the poor. The dish named in the source is ciğer kavurma, and it is not stated to be the same dish as sirkeli ciğer; even so, it shows that the same ingredient finds a place at the holiday table.

Ceremonial and Holiday Tables

In Amasya, food is a social ritual beyond everyday nourishment. The history section of the Amasya Mutfağı book lists these rituals. The velime dish, whose name is said to be a corruption of güvey önü, "before the groom", is a meal of whole meat, pilaf and tırtıl baklava on a single tray, for the couple about to enter the bridal chamber. At village weddings cauldrons of keşkek, pilaf, meat and halva are boiled and tables are laid on rooftops and in courtyards; because spoons were once hard to supply, guests would arrive with a wooden spoon tucked into their belts, and the meal was eaten together to the sound of drum and zurna. At the bride's bath meal, bakla dolması, walnut puaça, bat and lokma are served. The pilgrim's provision is chosen from foods that will not spoil on the road; in its present form it consists of toyka soup, pehli or whole meat, rice, dates and zamzam water. In the years when silk was raised, the barama meal was given to the neighbours who came to help gather the cocoons, and it was usually made of bakla dolması and bat.

Everyday customs, too, cannot be separated from the table. When small children cut a tooth, wheat is boiled with sugar and distributed to the neighbours, a custom called diş hediği. At Ramadan the iftar table usually brings cicik soup, lentil soup, rice with noodles, börek, hoşaf and çörek; for those who visit at the holiday, etli dolma, keşkek, baklava and poppy-seed çörek are prepared. The custom of putting a piece of Turkish delight in a handkerchief and giving it to children as pocket money lives on. The Zekeriya table, counted among the oldest customs of the region, is a table of raw foods to which anyone may come uninvited and which is laid so that a wish may be fulfilled; forty-one kinds of food are required. Sirkeli ciğer is not cited as the fixed dish of any of these ceremonies. It appears as a home dish, prepared at everyday and holiday tables, representing the offal side of the cuisine.

Today

Today sirkeli ciğer is mentioned among the regional dishes recommended to visitors to Amasya. In guides it appears in the same lists as çatal çorba, bakla dolması, keşkek, mumbar, ayva gallesi, göbek dolması, pirpirim and Amasya çöreği. No written record exists as to who first prepared the dish or when it entered the regional cuisine; it has remained knowledge passed down through household tradition. Academic studies of gastronomic tourism in Amasya also concentrate mostly on keşkek, bakla dolması, toyga soup, etli çiçek bamya, yanuç and vişneli ekmek; sirkeli ciğer has not been examined separately in these studies.

The outline is the same in most sources: the liver is cleaned, brought together with vinegar and salt, and cooked over low heat until it absorbs its liquid. The differences lie in the details and belong to home kitchens; the kind of liver, the sourness of the vinegar and the setting of the fire give the same recipe a slightly different taste in every house. This holds for most regional dishes that are not bound to a written standard. While some Amasya products such as cevizli ballı baklava have gained a written recipe through geographical indication registration, no such registration or standard recipe exists for sirkeli ciğer.

Chronology

1072–1074: In the Dîvânu Lugâti't-Türk, Kaşgarlı Mahmud records the word sirke, the verb "sirkëlë-" meaning to add vinegar, and the grape vinegar called mandu.

1789: El-Hâc İbrâhim Ağa of Amasya is appointed head cook of the palace at the accession of Selim III.

1803 (1218): İbrâhim Ağa retires as head cook; his family comes to be called the "Aşçızâdeler".

1818 (1234): El-Hâc Mehmed Ağa of the Aşçızâde family has the Çöplüce Madrasa built in Amasya.

1966: Kapriel H. Simonian's memory book, which also describes the daily life and cuisine of the Armenians of Amasya, is published in Venice.

2006: The first edition of Amasya Mutfağı, book no. 42 of the Amasya Governorship's cultural publications, appears.

2010: The second edition of Amasya Mutfağı is published.

2022: Amasya Cevizli Ballı Baklava, whose dough contains apple vinegar, is registered as a designation of origin on 23 December.

Sources

Primary sources

  • Hüsameddin, Amasya Tarihi, vol. 1, p. 187 (the Akdağ district and its sheep flocks); vol. 1, p. 167 (Çöplüce Madrasa) (amasya.bel.tr e-book, 1-4) amasya.bel.tr
  • Hüsameddin, Amasya Tarihi, vol. 6, p. 68 (Head Cook el-Hâc İbrâhim Ağa) (amasya.bel.tr e-book, 6-8)
  • Osman Fevzi Olcay, Amasya Hâtıraları, Amasya Municipality Cultural Publications, pp. 48–53 (butchers' shops in the Selağzı and Gümüşlü market)

Academic studies

  • Nursel Demirden, "Türk Mutfak Kültüründe Üzüm ve Dîvânu Lugâti't-Türk'te Üzümle İlgili Kullanımlar", Kahramanmaraş Sütçü İmam Üniversitesi Sosyal Bilimler Dergisi, 21, 2024, pp. 115–129
  • Kübra Ünal, Ali Samet Babaoğlu, Mustafa Karakaya, "Improving the textural and microstructural quality of cow meat by black chokeberry, grape, and hawthorn vinegar-based marination", Food Science & Nutrition, 11(10), 2023
  • Kenan Pala, "Amasya'da gastronomi turizminin geliştirilmesi: turizm profesyonellerinin görüşleri", Tourism and Recreation, 8(1), 2026; İbrahim İlhan, Kenan Pala, Yunus Doğan, "Yöresel Amasya Yemeklerinin Kırsal Turizm Kapsamında Değerlendirilmesi", ITCC'22, Amasya 2022

Official sources

  • Amasya İl Kültür ve Turizm Müdürlüğü, Yöre Mutfağı page (amasya.ktb.gov.tr)
  • T.C. Amasya Belediyesi Kent Rehberi, Yöre Mutfağı (kentrehberi.amasya.bel.tr)
  • Amasya Valiliği Kültür Yayınları No. 42, Amasya Mutfağı / Amasya Cuisine, 1st ed. 2006, 2nd ed. 2010 (Kültür Portalı e-book edition) kulturportali.gov.tr

Other sources

  • Sonia Tashjian, "Amasya: Cuisine", Houshamadyan, 2022 (based on Kapriel H. Simonian, Houshamadyan Bondagan Amasyo, Venice 1966) houshamadyan.org
  • Turkish Patent and Trademark Office, Geographical Indication No. 1301, Amasya Cevizli Ballı Baklavası (2022)
  • News reports on apple vinegar production in Gümüşhacıköy and the misket apple harvest (Halk TV, citing Anadolu Agency; Yeni Akit)
  • Sahih Muslim, the hadith "What an excellent relish vinegar is" (Encyclopedia of Translated Prophetic Hadiths)
  • Berfend Ber, Amasya Mutfağı / Amasya Cuisine (berfendber.blogspot.com)
  • Amasya yöresel tatları ve yemek rehberi (turkeyoutdoor.org)
  • Amasya'da ne yenir: yöresel lezzetler rehberi (yegez.com.tr); Amasya'nın meşhur yemekleri (tatilbudur.com)

Online sources