Amasya's tradition of sweets has its own interpretation of kadayıf: gömlek kadayıfı, literally "shirt kadayıf". It takes its name from the way fine shredded kadayıf wraps a filling just as a shirt wraps the body. The filling of walnuts, sugar and sometimes a pinch of cinnamon is enclosed in a casing woven from thin strands of pastry; the casing is either baked in the oven until golden or dipped in egg and fried in a pan, and is then laid in syrup. A dessert that calls for delicate craftsmanship, it appears often on the region's holiday and wedding tables. The fact that the official lists compiling Amasya's cuisine name it alongside the city's well-known sweets such as dene hasudası, kuymak, tırtıl baklava and unutma beni also shows how firmly established its local identity is.

To understand gömlek kadayıfı, two separate stories have to be read together. The first is the long story of kadayıf itself, born in Arab cuisine and transformed at the Ottoman table. The second is the story of Amasya, which reinterpreted this shared inheritance with the walnuts of its own orchards, its own customs of hospitality and its own order of the table. The dessert as it is made today stands at the point where these two lines meet.

The Name and the Form

In Turkish the word "gömlek" is also used in the sense of a thin covering that encloses something; this is why the skin a snake sheds is called a snake's gömlek. The dessert's name comes from this meaning. The walnut filling is wrapped in a thin cover of kadayıf strands, and the cooked casing surrounds the filling like a shirt. For this reason gömlek kadayıfı differs in form from the familiar tel kadayıf that is spread in a tray and cut into slices; each piece is wrapped on its own, a single-serving morsel.

The recipe in the book Amasya Mutfağı (Amasya Cuisine), published by the Governorship of Amasya, gives a detail that makes the name even clearer. The pastry used there is not described as ordinary loose-poured tel kadayıf; the ingredient list specifies fresh gömlek kadayıf "specially poured in the form of a net". In other words, the strands are poured as a fine mesh resembling the holes of a sieve, so that the sheet stays whole like a leaf. This net is cut into rectangular pieces, the filling is placed inside, and each piece is rolled up. Thus the "shirt" in the dessert's name truly comes from this netted pastry, which resembles a woven fabric.

In the household method made with tel kadayıf, the same effect is achieved by hand. A tuft of kadayıf is spread in the palm, a filling of walnuts mixed with sugar is placed in the middle, and the strands are carefully closed over it to form a small bundle. These bundles are arranged side by side in a tray; each one resembles a finely worked golden cocoon. The cocoon comparison is not foreign to Amasya. Sericulture was once one of the city's principal occupations, and cocoons were produced in seventeen villages; the "barama yemeği", the meal given to neighbours at the end of the cocoon season, has its own place among the ceremonial meals of the local cuisine.

The Long History of Kadayıf

The word kadayıf passed into Ottoman Turkish from the Arabic qaṭāʾif. In Arab cuisine this name described an older family of pastry sweets, different from the shredded dough we know today. The oldest known qaṭāʾif recipes appear in a tenth-century Abbasid cookbook. According to Priscilla Mary Işın, who has worked on the history of Turkish sweets, kadayıf was born in medieval Arab cuisine as a kind of thin griddle cake, was transformed in the early Ottoman period into threads of pastry likewise cooked on a griddle, and spread across the Near East in this new form. That the word in Turkish came to mean both the shredded dough and the desserts made from it is a result of this transformation. Some Turkish sources connect the word with "kadife" (velvet), but this explanation has no solid foundation.

At the Ottoman palace, kadayıf was for a long time among the most widely consumed sweets. In the period from the fifteenth to the eighteenth century, lokma, lalanga and kadayıf stand out as the palace's most common desserts; baklava, although served at the palace from the reign of Mehmed II (the Conqueror) onward, spread to wider circles only in the eighteenth century. At palace banquets kadayıf kept its place at the table alongside jams, helva, Turkish delight, aşure and ice cream. That pilaf and kadayıf are named together when the traditional dishes of late Ottoman cuisine are listed shows the weight the dessert carried in this cuisine. The appearance of kadayıf in the Ferhâd ile Şîrîn mesnevi of the sixteenth-century poet Lâmiî Çelebi suggests that it was a taste known beyond the palace records, in the everyday world of literature as well.

Melceü't-Tabbâhîn, written by Mehmed Kâmil in 1844 and regarded as the first printed Turkish cookbook, clearly shows how far kadayıf had diversified. The book contains many recipes, among them ordinary tel kadayıf, palace tel kadayıf, white kadayıf, kadayıf with clotted cream, flat kadayıf, kadayıf without fat, kadayıf with yufka and bread kadayıf. A study of these recipes also counts in the same group pot kadayıf, washed kadayıf, kadayıf with clotted cream and rice flour, two kinds of fried kadayıf, and kadayıf börek. The presence of fried kadayıf in this early list is significant, because the official recipe for gömlek kadayıfı in Amasya likewise relies on frying in a pan rather than baking in an oven. Ottoman kadayıf desserts used, besides the shredded pastry, ingredients such as butter, eggs, milk, sugar, walnuts, hazelnuts, pistachios, almonds, honey, clotted cream, rice flour and rose water. It is also noted that in the same period the main sweeteners were grape molasses and honey, while sugar was an ingredient used mostly by the well-to-do.

The tel kadayıf sold on the market today is produced by pouring a thin batter made from special-purpose kadayıf flour through fine openings onto a heated rotating griddle. The batter cooks on the griddle into threads as fine as hair; these strands are sold fresh, chilled or frozen as an intermediate product. In Turkey, tel kadayıf is defined by standard TS 10344 as a semi-processed product made of flour and water. Most desserts made from kadayıf strands are either baked or fried and then laid in sugar syrup. Gömlek kadayıfı stays within this general rule; what sets it apart is that the strands are wrapped around a filling instead of being spread in a tray.

Its Place in Amasya Cuisine

Amasya has a rich cuisine, nourished by the fertile orchards of the Yeşilırmak valley and by the refinement accumulated over a long urban life. Compilations describing the city's food culture attribute this richness to Amasya's long role as a capital for many communities and to its being, in the Ottoman period, a centre where princes were trained. In this view, Amasya, known as the "City of Princes", arranged its table with an artist's meticulousness and developed dishes of its own, worthy of sultans in taste, appearance and quality. The renown keşkek won in Amasya, the carefully rolled leaves of bakla dolması, and the dessert unutma beni, which makes use of stale bread, are cited in the same compilations as examples of this refinement.

In the local cuisine list of the Provincial Directorate of Culture and Tourism, attached to the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, Amasya's desserts are listed as follows: dene hasudası, kuymak, yuka tatlısı, ayva gailesi, elma tatlısı, fırın sütlaç, gelin parmağı, gömlek kadayıfı, kalbur tatlısı, höşmerim, peluza (hasuda), şeker böreği, unutma beni, vişneli ekmek and zerdali gailesi. This list is repeated word for word in many publications introducing local dishes, and it forms the main basis for recognising gömlek kadayıfı as a dessert belonging to Amasya. That a large share of the desserts in the list are built on walnuts, grape molasses and butter makes gömlek kadayıfı a natural member of this family as well.

The most detailed recipe for the dessert is found in the bilingual book Amasya Mutfağı, first printed by the Governorship of Amasya in 2006 and republished in a second edition in 2010. Edited by H. Harun Yörgüç, the book was prepared through the joint work of food and beverage service teachers of the Amasya Anatolian Girls' Vocational High School, master instructors, cooks and housewives of the city. In this book gömlek kadayıfı appears at the end of the desserts section, on the same page as the Amasya pişmaniye known as teltel. That the recipe comes from a work in which culinary knowledge taught at school met methods handed down from generation to generation in homes gives it the value of a local document.

The Heavy Guest's Table and Ceremonial Meals

In Amasya this dessert heralds special days. A tray of gömlek kadayıfı is most often the sign of a celebration, the hosting of a guest or a holiday morning. The delicacy of its preparation is in fact an expression of the care a host shows a guest. The place where this care is seen most clearly is the "ağır misafir" (heavy guest) table peculiar to Amasya. According to compilations describing local tradition, the people of Amasya wish to see a guest at their table at every meal; if there is no guest at a given meal, they invite a poor man, or even a holy fool, to their table and share their food with him. The same source says that in Amasya being a guest was considered a greater merit than being a host.

A guest who comes from outside and usually spends the night in the house is called an "ağır misafir", and the table laid for him always holds six dishes. The kinds of dishes hardly ever change; in order of service they are toyka soup, bütün et (whole meat), rice pilaf, sini su böreği, okra, and a dessert. In summer, patlıcan pehli takes the place of the whole meat. The dessert, the last dish of the table, is one of tırtıl baklava, kuymak or gömlek kadayıfı. That gömlek kadayıfı is counted as one of these three desserts reveals that it was seen less as an everyday sweet than as an offering that displayed the standing of the household.

Each of these three represents a different kind of labour. Tırtıl baklava is a laborious dessert, prepared by rolling out sheets of pastry from walnut-sized balls of dough, wrapping them with walnuts around a rolling pin and gathering them, drying them for a day, and only then cutting and frying them. Kuymak, by contrast, is a simple home dessert in which flour is added to grape molasses boiled in butter until it reaches the consistency of helva, and which is eaten hot. Gömlek kadayıfı stands between the two: because it uses ready-made kadayıf pastry it does not take as long as tırtıl baklava, but wrapping and frying each piece one by one demands far more handwork than kuymak. The fact that tırtıl baklava appears beside whole meat and pilaf on the tray of the velime meal, served to the bride and groom on the wedding night, also shows that dessert always had a set place at Amasya's ceremonial tables.

The Recipe in the Amasya Cuisine Book

The quantities given in the book are as follows: 500 grams of fresh gömlek kadayıf poured in net form, two glasses of coarsely chopped walnuts, three eggs, 200 grams of butter, one cup of vegetable oil, ground cinnamon, and two spoonfuls of granulated sugar for the filling. For the syrup, one kilogram of granulated sugar, four glasses of water and the juice of half a lemon are used. Two things in the ingredient list stand out. The first is the use of butter and vegetable oil together; the butter gives flavour, while the oil delays the butter from burning quickly during frying. The second is the presence of egg in the recipe. The egg forms a thin coating on the outer surface of the kadayıf and holds the strands together during frying.

The method is described with the same clarity. The fresh kadayıf is divided into rectangular pieces, walnuts, granulated sugar and cinnamon are placed on each piece, and it is rolled up. The eggs are whisked thoroughly in a wide bowl, and the fats are melted and heated. The kadayıf rolls, coated in egg, are fried on both sides until they turn pinkish. The hot fried rolls are dropped into cold syrup and taken out after resting in the syrup for five minutes. The dessert is served garnished, as desired, with clotted cream or walnuts. In the book's English section the same recipe is given under the name "freshly made gömlek kadayıf", the choice having been made to present the dessert to foreign readers without translating its name.

This recipe brings kadayıf close to a kind of fried dessert and links it to the same family as the fried kadayıf of Ottoman cuisine. The difference the frying method brings is felt above all in texture. The roll coated in egg and fried acquires a thin crust on the outside, while the strands inside remain softer together with the walnut filling. Keeping the roll in the syrup for only five minutes ensures that the dessert does not entirely lose the golden crispness of its surface as it absorbs the syrup.

The Oven-Baked Method

There is also an oven-baked version of the dessert, and it can be made with the tel kadayıf available on the market instead of the specially poured net kadayıf. In this method the tel kadayıf is moistened by drizzling melted butter over it, so that the strands cling to one another. A tuft of kadayıf is spread in the palm, the walnut and sugar filling is placed in the middle, and the strands are closed over the filling to form a bundle. The bundles are arranged in a greased tray, close together but without crushing one another.

The prepared kadayıf bundles are baked in a moderate oven until their tops turn golden and crisp. Patience is needed at this stage; the strands should take on a golden colour but must not burn. Sugar syrup, prepared in advance and cooled, is poured over the hot kadayıf as it comes out of the oven.

The meeting of hot pastry and cold syrup lets the syrup seep in between the strands of the kadayıf and brings out its distinctive texture. This rule is not peculiar to gömlek kadayıfı; the same principle appears again and again in the syrup-soaked desserts of Amasya cuisine. In the same book, the recipe for kalbura bastı has the dessert from the oven meet cold syrup only after it has cooled completely, while tırtıl baklava is soaked in syrup after being fried, showing that the difference in temperature was deliberately observed in the region's confectionery. The syrup uses four glasses of water and the juice of half a lemon to one kilogram of sugar; the lemon prevents the sugar from crystallising as it cools.

Texture and Serving

The most appealing quality of gömlek kadayıfı is the contrast between the crispness of its outer surface and the softness of the walnut filling within. When it is bitten, first the gentle crunch of the strands, then the rich aroma of walnut and the sweetness of the syrup follow one another in the mouth. When cinnamon is used, a light, warm fragrance is added to this sequence. Because the dessert is prepared as single-bite rolls or bundles, there is no need to slice it at the table, and every guest can be served an equal, unbroken piece.

At some tables this flavour is enriched further by adding a spoonful of clotted cream on top. The Amasya Mutfağı book likewise writes that the dessert may be served garnished with clotted cream or walnuts. The cream softens the sharp sweetness of the syrup and sets up a cool contrast with the kadayıf, which is served hot or warm. Walnuts sprinkled on top, for their part, serve as a herald of the filling inside. The fried rolls are lifted out of the syrup one by one and placed on the serving plate.

Walnuts and the Orchards of Amasya

The preparation of this dessert is also closely tied to Amasya's abundance of walnuts. The large, oily walnuts grown in the region's orchards give depth and aroma to the filling of gömlek kadayıfı. For this reason the dessert is as much the product of what the land yields, carried to the table, as it is of a recipe. The fresher and more plentiful the walnuts, the fuller the flavour the inside of the kadayıf takes on. Fresh walnuts keep their oil and give the filling a lightly sweet fragrance; stale walnuts turn bitter and can spoil even the taste of the syrup.

According to TÜİK (Turkish Statistical Institute) data for 2023, 7,230 tonnes of walnuts are produced in the province each year, a quantity corresponding to 2 percent of Turkey's total walnut production. Amasya's climate and soil are suited not only to apples and cherries but also to pears, almonds, walnuts, vineyards and plums. In a city known for its Amasya apple, the walnut ranks behind the apple in commercial importance, yet in the kitchen it is the common ingredient of almost every dessert. Walnuts appear in most of the dessert recipes in the Amasya Mutfağı book: the pastry sheets of tırtıl baklava are wrapped with walnuts, walnuts are placed inside the dough of kalbura bastı, walnuts are scattered over unutma beni, and vişneli ekmek is also finished with walnuts. In gömlek kadayıfı, however, the walnut forms the very body of the dessert.

The name gömlek kadayıfı is not used only in Amasya, nor does it describe the same dessert everywhere. In some publications, recipes given under the name "gömlek kadayıfı" are in fact the ordinary tray kadayıf, in which tel kadayıf mixed with butter is spread in a tray in two layers with walnuts between them. In some recipe collections, the name "fincan kadayıfı" (cup kadayıf) or "gömlek tatlısı" is given to a single-serving dessert in which tel kadayıf is packed into a cup with its edges hanging over the sides, filled in the middle with walnuts, and baked. These names show that the idea of kadayıf wrapping a filling has been interpreted in different ways in different regions. What is peculiar to Amasya is the rolling of fresh kadayıf poured in net form, its coating in egg and frying, and its brief rest in cold syrup.

The dessert is also related to other Turkish desserts made with tel kadayıf pastry. Künefe, made with cheese, burma kadayıf, wrapped into a roll and sliced, and kadayıf dolması, filled with walnuts, are different interpretations of the same pastry. Yassı kadayıf, taş kadayıf and bread kadayıf, on the other hand, despite the similarity of their names, are different desserts with no connection to the shredded pastry. What distinguishes gömlek kadayıfı within this wide family is, on the one hand, that each piece is wrapped individually and, on the other, its defined place at Amasya's heavy guest table.

Gömlek kadayıfı, in which fine strands are patiently wrapped, walnuts are used generously and the syrup is skilfully balanced, shows the value Amasya cuisine places on elegance and labour. Each of its bundles carries the patience of a skilled hand and the cheer of a shared table. That the Amasya Mutfağı book was prepared through the joint work of housewives and vocational school teachers is also a reminder that this knowledge lived in homes and was committed to writing only recently.

Chronology

10th century: The oldest known qaṭāʾif recipes appear in an Abbasid cookbook.

15th–18th centuries: Lokma, lalanga and kadayıf are among the most widely consumed desserts at the Ottoman palace.

1844: Mehmed Kâmil's Melceü't-Tabbâhîn gives recipes for some ten varieties of kadayıf.

October 2006: The first edition of the Governorship of Amasya's book Amasya Mutfağı is printed; the recipe for gömlek kadayıfı appears in the desserts section.

February 2010: The second edition of the book is published.

2023: According to TÜİK data, 7,230 tonnes of walnuts are produced in Amasya, 2 percent of Turkey's production.

Bibliography

Academic studies

  • Badem, Abdullah. "İlk Türk Yemek Kitabı Melceü't-Tabbahin'de Bulunan Tatlılar Üzerine Bir Değerlendirme". Çatalhöyük Uluslararası Turizm ve Sosyal Araştırmalar Dergisi, 13 (2024), 13–24. doi:10.58455/cutsad.1498823. dergipark.org.tr

Official sources

  • Yörgüç, H. Harun (ed.). Amasya Mutfağı / Amasya Cuisine. Governorship of Amasya Publication No. 42, 2nd edition, Ankara 2010 (1st edition 2006). Available as a PDF on the website of the Amasya Provincial Directorate of Culture and Tourism, Ministry of Culture and Tourism.
  • Amasya Provincial Directorate of Culture and Tourism, "Yöre Mutfağı" (Local Cuisine) (amasya.ktb.gov.tr).
  • Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, General Directorate of Agrarian Reform, Amasya Tarımsal Yatırım Rehberi (Amasya Agricultural Investment Guide) (TÜİK 2023 data).

Books

  • Işın, Priscilla Mary. Sherbet and Spice: The Complete Story of Turkish Sweets and Desserts. I.B. Tauris, 2013; Gülbeşeker: Türk Tatlıları Tarihi. Yapı Kredi Yayınları, 2019.

Other sources

  • "Kadayıf" and "Kadayif" articles, Wikipedia (Turkish and English; auxiliary source). en.wikipedia.org
  • "Amasya'nın meşhur yemekleri", Milliyet Yemek (based on the Ministry of Culture and Tourism list). milliyet.com.tr
  • "Amasya Yemek Rehberi", Turkey Outdoor.

Online sources