Zerde is a rice sweet made from rice, sugar, starch and saffron, which takes its golden-yellow colour from the saffron. In Amasya it is not counted among the everyday desserts; it is cooked for special celebrations, weddings and holiday tables, mostly at home, and only occasionally found in sweet shops. This ceremonial character did not appear in the region out of nowhere. The deeds of endowment of two Ottoman ladies who lived for years in Amasya beside the princes record zerde, as early as the end of the fifteenth and the beginning of the sixteenth century, as a treat handed out to the public on kandil nights, on Friday nights and on religious holidays. In the same centuries zerde was present everywhere at palace festivities, from the viziers' tables to the public banquets, and it was also an inseparable part of the holy-day menus of the imarets, the public soup kitchens.

Zerde cannot be called an Amasya invention. It spread from the Ottoman palace kitchen and the kitchens of pious endowments (waqfs) to many cities of Anatolia, and everywhere it is associated with weddings, circumcision feasts, religious holidays and mevlits. Its place in Amasya is best understood at the point where this wider tradition meets the stipulations of the endowments founded in the city and the region's own customs of weddings, hospitality and holidays.

Name and Origins

The word zerde derives from the Persian zard or zerd, meaning yellow. Dictionaries define it as a sweetened rice jelly coloured and scented with saffron. Some accounts link the word to a Persian root meaning gold; what the two explanations share is that the sweet takes its name from its colour. The name is believed to have come from Iran, and the sweet is thought to have entered Turkish cooking through the Anatolian Seljuks. In the Ottoman period zerde became a widespread treat both at the palace table and among the people.

There is also a tradition about where and on what occasion it was first made. According to Evliya Çelebi, zerde was first prepared by the Umayyad caliph Muawiya as a mourning dish after the death of Hamza. Since no document supports this account, it should be counted as an oral tradition. Even so, many sources repeat that zerde was at first known as a mourning dish and later became the sweet of circumcision feasts, weddings and victory celebrations. The reason usually given for this change is the yellow of saffron, which resembles the sun and gold.

In texture, zerde sits somewhere between a jelly and the milk puddings. Its ingredients and method are so close to rice pudding that it has been called its twin; the difference is that water takes the place of milk and the sweet is dyed yellow with saffron. Because saffron is expensive, many households today use turmeric for the colour. This also explains why the sweet lost some of its former standing: a zerde made with real saffron, genuine honey, currants and pomegranate was one of the costly items of a banquet table.

Zerde is also said to have travelled as a gift. According to tradition, in Iran people took zerde to those they loved and valued. In some parts of Anatolia the trace of this custom of offering survives in the zerde given to women who have given birth, to visitors who come to see the child, and to those who gather at a house of mourning after a mevlit. Thus, despite the early tradition of a mourning dish, the sweet became a treat shared on both the joyful and the sorrowful days of ceremony.

Zerde at Palace Banquets

In the Ottoman palace kitchen, sweets were prepared in a separate section called the helvahane, and zerde was among the main sweets cooked in its large cauldrons. Sources note that it appeared on palace tables in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The most detailed information comes from festival registers. The circumcision feast of Süleyman the Magnificent's sons, Şehzade Bayezid and Şehzade Cihangir, held in 1539, lasted thirteen days, and the register that recorded the dishes served at the banquets states that zerde was prepared for the feast given to the viziers. It is also reported that during the same festivities zerde appeared not only at the viziers' tables but at all the banquets given to different sections of society. Banquet registers kept for the circumcision ceremonies of Süleyman's other sons and for the wedding festivities of his daughter Mihrimah Sultan and Rüstem Pasha likewise mention the serving and the recipe of zerde.

A custom called çanak yağması is also mentioned for zerde, which was served with pilaf and meat dishes at great banquets: when the feast ended, the bowls were left to the crowd, who took them away. It is also reported that after victories won in war during Süleyman's reign, soldiers were served menus that included zerde. Studies of Ottoman dessert culture count zerde among the leading grain-based sweets of the period. Made with rice, honey, saffron and various nuts, it was an indispensable treat at weddings, feasts and holidays, and also the principal sweet at banquets given for the poor. The golden-yellow colour that saffron gave was a visual pleasure and also a sign of wealth and prosperity, so that zerde became a sweet that made social standing visible.

An old saying puts this prevalence into words: a circumcision feast without zerde could not be called a feast. It is said that zerde was always present at the circumcision festivities of the children of pashas and sultans. That it was cooked and handed out during Ramadan, on Fridays and during the first ten days of Muharram belongs to the same wide use. As the sweet of joyful days such as circumcisions, weddings, victories, holidays and kandil nights, zerde was at once a treat that made status visible and one that could be distributed to the poor. This second side is seen most clearly in the records of the imarets.

Zerde and Zırbaç in the Imaret Kitchen

In Ottoman imarets the daily meal mostly consisted of soup and bread; on Fridays, kandil nights, during Ramadan and on holidays the table grew richer, and zerde was added beside the rice pilaf. This order is written out item by item in the deeds of endowment. The Hagia Sophia endowment deed of Mehmed II (the Conqueror) stipulates that rice pilaf, zerde and zirbace be cooked in the imaret kitchen every day during Ramadan, on the eves of holidays and on Friday nights. In the kitchen of the Fatih Complex imaret, dane, zerde and zirbace were cooked every Friday night, and the share of the madrasa students was served separately. In the Arabic deed that Mehmed II had drawn up for Eyüp Sultan, it is required that zerbaç be given together with zerde on holidays and on the days of the mevlid-i nebevî, the Prophet's birthday. The link between zerde and mevlit days thus goes back to the early Ottoman endowment records.

The same picture is repeated in other endowments. In the imaret of the Mahmud Pasha Complex in Istanbul, soup and bread were given every day, and on Ramadan days, Fridays and kandil nights a richer table of rice pilaf with zerde and zirbaç was served. The deed of the Sinan Pasha Imaret at Sincanlı in Afyonkarahisar likewise stipulates that zerde be added to the meals during Ramadan, on Fridays and on kandil days, as in the Istanbul imarets. In the deed of the complex of Hafsa Sultan, Süleyman's mother, in Manisa, zerde appears together with zirbaç and dane among the dishes to be cooked on Fridays. In the sixteenth-century accounts of the imarets in and around Edirne, thousands of dirhams in cash and supplies are seen to have been set aside for cooking dane, zerde and zirbaç on Friday nights, on the Regaib and Berat kandils, during Ramadan and on the two holidays. It is also recorded that in the Istanbul imarets zerde was served with meat pilaf on Thursdays.

The sixteenth-century historian Gelibolulu Mustafa Âli describes a menu particular to Friday evenings in the imarets, the imaret stew or zırva, together with pilaf and zerde, and says that poor villagers who knew of it could eat these dishes, which they could not find in their own homes, only on that evening in the imaret kitchen. By this account zerde was also regarded in the waqf kitchen as a mark that set one day of the week apart from the others. For the poor, the Friday table laid with pilaf and zerde was a small feast resembling the kandils and holidays of the year.

Zırbaç or zirbace, named right beside zerde in the deeds, was a separate dish. Its origins go back to medieval Iranian cooking, where it appears as a meat stew in the sense of a cumin dish; after passing into Ottoman cuisine it was cooked with meat until the middle of the fifteenth century, then began to be made without meat and turned into a fruit sweet prepared with honey, raisins, almonds, apricots, plums, figs, starch and saffron. Because of the tartness of the dried fruit it was also called ekşi aş, sour dish, in Turkish. According to Mehmet Kavak's study, nineteenth- and twentieth-century sources show zırva appearing in the imarets as a mixed sweet served in place of zerde. That the two sweets stood side by side on holy-day tables has led some researchers to treat them as close to each other, or even as the same dish. One of the most interesting examples of this confusion, as described below, concerns an endowment deed in Amasya itself.

From Amasya to Tokat: The Endowment of Gülbahar Hatun

One of the oldest links between zerde and Amasya runs through the life of Gülbahar Hatun, the mother of Bayezid II. When her son Şehzade Bayezid was sent to the sanjak of Amasya in 1454/55, Gülbahar Hatun settled in Amasya with him and lived in the city for twenty-seven years, until her son came to the throne in 1481. Bayezid's wife, who is thought to have married him in Amasya and who was also named Gülbahar, the mother of Selim I, was in the city in these years as well; mother-in-law and daughter-in-law lived together for a time in Bayezid's harem in Amasya. Gülbahar Hatun, who went to Istanbul as valide sultan, died in 1492. Her son Bayezid II had a complex built in Tokat in her name.

According to the endowment deed of the Tokat Gülbahar Hatun Waqf, the complex, completed in AH 898 (1492), contained a mosque, a madrasa, a kitchen, a cellar, a bakery, a pantry, a woodshed, a stable and an ablution room. The deed requires that zerde be offered to the public every Friday night; the stipulation also names the two holidays and the Regaib and Berat nights separately. Such regular cooking of zerde was reflected in the endowment's expenses. In the account records of 1592 examined by Kübra Dursun, the Tokat endowment paid 1,214 akçe for 180 dirhams of saffron. In the same year the endowment founded in Trabzon in the name of Selim I's mother, which also bore the name Gülbahar Hatun, bought only 21 dirhams of saffron, paying 104 akçe for it.

Comparing the kitchen items of the two endowments, Dursun points out that almonds, starch, apricots, broad beans and fresh grapes appear among the purchases of the Tokat endowment but not in the Trabzon records. Noting that starch, almonds and fresh grapes were used mostly for making zerde, she concludes that the Trabzon endowment either did not cook zerde at all or cooked it very rarely, while the Tokat endowment cooked and distributed more sweets. This is an inference, though one based on documents. The same study suggests, as a possibility, that saffron may have been more plentiful and cheaper in Tokat because the spice was grown in the region. The records also show how costly a treat zerde was in the waqf kitchen: a single spice item came to hundreds of akçe.

Berat Night at the Bülbül Hatun Imaret

The endowment that recorded zerde within Amasya itself belonged to Bülbül Hatun, the wife of Bayezid II and the mother of Şehzade Ahmed. Bülbül Hatun stayed with her son Ahmed while he was sanjak governor in Amasya, and she tied all her property to her endowments in Amasya and Lâdik. Her complex in Amasya was built in 1510 (AH 915) in the Hatuniye quarter, on the north bank of the Yeşilırmak; it contained a masjid, a primary school, an imaret and a fountain. Bülbül Hatun had two endowment deeds drawn up for her waqfs, in 1511 and 1513. The masjid was later turned into a mosque and is still open for worship today; the school building is used as a place where handicrafts are sold. The imaret, however, has collapsed and has not survived, and its site is thought to be the empty ground in the mosque courtyard.

Ahmet Gündüz's study of the deeds sets out the workings of the imaret in detail. The imaret served the endowment's staff, ten orphan pupils studying at the school, elderly women in need and the guests staying in the hospice; according to the deed, forty bowls were set aside for forty poor people, each to receive 24 dirhams of meat, a ladle of food and three loaves of bread. Every day the baker took 7 batman of flour from the pantry-keeper and baked 180 pairs of loaves from it. Two meals a day were served at the imaret: rice soup in the mid-morning and wheat soup after the afternoon prayer. For sweets, honey, grape molasses, starch, walnuts, almonds, black plums, figs and apricots were bought.

On holy days and nights the imaret's table changed. On the Thursday afternoon before the first Friday of the month of Rajab, 3 batman of helva were cooked and given to the poor, and throughout Ramadan herise, that is keşkek, was cooked every evening. On Berat night, dane and zerde harcı were served; dane means rice pilaf with meat. On the eve of the Ramadan holiday tutmaç was cooked, and on the holiday itself dane pilaf and a special sweet called zırva harcı, the same menu being repeated on the Feast of the Sacrifice. By the measures in the deed, zırva harcı was made from one batman and six vukıyye of honey, one batman and six vukıyye of raisins, six vukıyye each of apricots and black plums, half a batman of figs, two nügi of almonds, saffron and eight vukıyye of starch. Aşure was handed out on the tenth day of Muharram, and on Regaib and Berat nights the same dishes as on the holidays were served.

This record is one of the oldest known documents in Amasya to tie zerde to a kandil night. Yet exactly which sweet zerde stands for here is open to debate. In a footnote to his article, Gündüz writes that zerde also appears in some sources as zırba or zırbaç, and he defines it as a dish made with mutton, almonds, red raisins, honey, saffron, dates, apricots, figs and starch. Other sources, however, list zerde and zırbaç as two separate dishes on the same menu; the deeds of Mehmed II, of Mahmud Pasha and of Hafsa Sultan are clear examples. The ingredients of the zırva harcı in Bülbül Hatun's deed match the form of zırbaç that had turned into a fruit sweet. For this reason, whether the zerde served on Berat night was a saffron rice sweet or a mixture close to zırbaç cannot be said with certainty without seeing the text of the deed itself.

Saffron and Rice

The ingredient that defines zerde is saffron. Saffron is obtained from the stigmas of the Crocus sativus flower. It is reported that some 150 flowers must be processed to gather about one gram, which is why the spice has been regarded as precious throughout history and why its presence on a table was taken as a sign of the host's generosity. The 1592 accounts of the Tokat endowment show what this value meant in akçe. As for the rice, a variety high in starch was preferred. In old recipes the rice was soaked in water for a long time to soften it, and the saffron was soaked beforehand in water or rose water so that it would release its colour. Some recipes add cloves or cinnamon as well as rose water.

The sequence of preparation is similar across sources. The saffron is steeped in rose water for two or three hours. The washed rice is boiled in plenty of water until soft. Starch dissolved in water in a separate bowl is added to the rice, followed by sugar or honey and the saffron-scented rose water. The mixture is brought to a boil once or twice while being stirred constantly, then the heat is lowered and it is cooked a little longer, and the zerde, once it has thickened, is divided into bowls and left to cool. For one cup of rice, about eight cups of water, two and a half cups of sugar or one and a half cups of honey, half a cup of rose water and about a gram of saffron are the proportions found in published recipes. Adding half a dessert spoon of turmeric to deepen the colour is also seen in present-day recipes. No separate Amasya recipe for zerde is documented; the zerde made in the region follows this general method.

Garnishes

The top of the zerde is garnished once it has cooled. In recipes handed down from the Ottoman period, pomegranate seeds, currants and almonds stand out; pine nuts are also often used. In the zerde made in Amasya, currants and pine nuts are the most common garnishes. The red pomegranate seeds on the golden ground are the chief element that gives the sweet its festive look. These additions vary the taste as much as they improve the appearance.

In earlier times, since cooling facilities were limited, zerde was kept in cool places to chill. Because of its light texture it is still preferred especially in the hot summer months. Some writers think that the yellow of saffron, which recalls the summer season, may be a clue that the sweet was eaten more in the warm months; this is an interpretation.

Zerde at the Amasya Table

The traditional Amasya wedding table, especially at village weddings, is set by boiling cauldrons of keşkek, pilaf, meat and helva together. Tables are spread on the roofs of houses and in courtyards, and the meal is eaten together to the sound of drum and zurna. In the past, because it was hard to supply spoons and to serve, guests are said to have come with a wooden spoon tucked into their belts. Local guides record zerde as a delicacy prepared for special celebrations and weddings, made often on holiday tables, cooked mostly at home and occasionally found in sweet shops. Offering zerde at mevlits and on occasions such as a birth or a visit to see a newborn child is a custom found in many parts of Anatolia. No written source has been found, however, that describes a zerde custom specific to the mevlit table in Amasya.

Looking at the lists of Amasya's regional dishes and sweets, one finds that zerde is not mentioned in them. Among the region's known sweets are dene hasudası, hasuda, yuka tatlısı, ayva gallesi, apple dessert, baked rice pudding, gelin parmağı, gömlek kadayıfı, kalburabastı, höşmerim, şeker böreği, unutma beni, vişneli ekmek and zerdali gallesi. At the table for an honoured guest, six dishes are served, and the sweet is tırtıl baklava, kuymak or gömlek kadayıfı; zerde does not appear in that order. This does not mean that zerde is unknown in the region. In Amasya zerde lives on as a custom that comes from the common ceremonial cooking of Anatolia and is kept up by work done at home; it is not counted among the region's own sweets.

The place of zerde in Amasya cannot be separated from the city's idea of hospitality. It is said that the people of Amasya want a guest at their table at every meal, and if there is none they call in a poor person, or even a holy fool, and share their food with him. When a death occurs in a household, neighbours and relatives cook food in their own homes and send it to the house of mourning on trays; it is the custom that the returned dishes are only rinsed in clear water and not washed. In the thanksgiving meal prepared for those returning from the pilgrimage, there are toyka soup, pehli or whole meat, pilaf, dates and zamzam water. The zerde tied to Friday and kandil nights in the deeds of Gülbahar Hatun and Bülbül Hatun is the same idea of sharing written in the language of the endowment.

Nor was zerde a sweet of Muslim homes alone. According to the memorial book compiled by Kapriel H. Simonian on the traditions of the Armenians of Amasya and published in 1966, on New Year's days the Armenian schools held pre-arranged celebrations instead of the usual lessons. On this occasion the children of well-to-do families brought their teachers a bottle of good arak, a plate of zerde or some other gift. The record shows that in the early twentieth century zerde was a treat shared by different communities in Amasya and passed from hand to hand as a gift. It gives no information, however, about how the sweet on the plate was made.

Keşkek and the Wedding Meal

Keşkek, cooked on the same days as zerde for the wedding table, is one of the most deeply rooted dishes of Amasya cooking. Amasya-style keşkek, made with mutton and fenugreek paste and cooked with cracked wheat, is the main dish of weddings and special days. The stone-oven keşkek, which carries a geographical indication, is made with lamb neck, marrow bones, chickpeas, cracked wheat and butter; it is placed in an earthen pot in a stone oven heated with wood fire the evening before and cooks overnight for about twelve hours. The crust that forms on the surface shows that the keşkek is well cooked. Merzifon Keşkeği is also registered separately. If one recalls that the herise cooked on Ramadan evenings at the Bülbül Hatun imaret was also keşkek, it can be said that the two dishes have stood side by side in the city for centuries.

The link between keşkek and the region's past is also associated with archaeological finds. At the Oluz Höyük excavations an earthenware pot was found, containing bone and grain fragments, linked to a palace kitchen of the Persian period, thirty centimetres long and of a size that could cook a meal for thirty people. This find has been interpreted as showing that keşkek goes back 2,500 years. Some think the dish reaches back to the Hittite period; this view remains an interpretation and does not rest directly on a document.

Other ceremonial foods of Amasya should not be confused with zerde. At the bride's bath, stuffed broad beans, walnut puaça, bat and lokma are eaten; at the tesbih ceremony after a funeral, the congregation is served Amasya çörek, puaça and tea. Serving zerde after a mevlit is a custom seen in many parts of Anatolia.

Zerde in Anatolia

Zerde is kept alive in different forms in different parts of Anatolia. In Konya the custom of offering zerde to guests at weddings is still alive. In Edirne, because of the nearness of one of Turkey's important rice-growing basins, local varieties such as milk zerde are common. In Karabük it is made among the holiday sweets. Istanbul, Gaziantep, Balıkesir, Şanlıurfa and Tekirdağ are also counted among the cities that preserve zerde in its traditional form. It also lives on as a sweet distributed to homes at birth celebrations and during the first ten days of Muharram.

Evliya Çelebi's Seyahatname contains many allusions to zerde. The traveller praises in particular the melon zerde he ate in Sapanca, Beypazarı and Diyarbakır. The melons, which he says smelled of musk and amber, were cooked with cinnamon, cloves and rice; according to Evliya Çelebi, even zerde made with Athenian honey is not as good as this melon zerde of Diyarbakır. This melon zerde suggests that the name zerde stood less for a single recipe than for a kind of sweet thickened with rice; this is an interpretation drawn from the examples in the Seyahatname.

Today zerde has lost the prevalence it had in earlier centuries. The high price of saffron per kilogram is given as one of the main reasons the sweet is seldom made. Even so, it continues to be cooked during Ramadan, at weddings and at mevlits. Its place among the traditional sweets presented at festivals and gastronomy events helps promote it as cultural heritage.

Chronology

1454/55: Şehzade Bayezid is sent to the sanjak of Amasya; his mother Gülbahar Hatun settles in Amasya and lives in the city until 1481.

1492: The Tokat Gülbahar Hatun Waqf is completed; its deed stipulates that zerde be offered to the public every Friday night.

1510: Bülbül Hatun's complex in Amasya is built in the Hatuniye quarter.

1511 and 1513: Bülbül Hatun's endowment deeds are drawn up; they stipulate that dane and zerde harcı be served at the imaret on Berat night.

1539: At the thirteen-day circumcision feast of Şehzade Bayezid and Şehzade Cihangir, zerde appears at the banquet tables.

1592: The account record of the Tokat Gülbahar Hatun Waqf shows 1,214 akçe spent on 180 dirhams of saffron.

1966: Kapriel H. Simonian's memorial book on Amasya is published; it records that zerde was taken to teachers at New Year in the Armenian schools.

Bibliography

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