A remarkable source of information about the little known history of Turkish confectionery is an account by a professional confectioner who pursued his investigations in Greece and Turkey in the 1830s. Friedrich Unger was chief confectioner to King Otto I, who as as a young Bavarian prince of just 17 was appointed as the first king of Greece by the European powers in 1832. Unger, who accompanied Otto's German household first to Nauplia and then Athens, was intrigued by the legendary reputation of oriental confectionery and 'missed no opportunity wherever it arose' to investigate it for himself, but was advised that Istanbul was the place to find Oriental confectionery par excellence. In the summer of 1835, pleading ill health, Unger was granted leave of absence and sailed to Istanbul, where his researches into various branches of the confectioner’s trade included a visit to the confectionery kitchen at Topkap? Palace. He wrote his book in Athens in 1837 and it was published there in 1838.

An abridged Turkish translation of Unger’s Confectionery of the Orient was published around 1987 by the Konya Cultural and Tourism Association, but so much was left out (including six colour plates) and so many problems of terminology were left undealt with, that I decided to track down the German original. Only a decade later did the Internet came to the rescue, revealing a copy of this rare work in the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek. Merete Çakmak undertook the translation into English, assisted by Renate Ömero_ullar?, and this stage of the project alone demanded that we acquire a working knowledge of traditional confectionery techniques in general and Turkish confectionery in particular. We consulted numerous experts, visited working confectioners in Istanbul, and pored over 18th and 19th century dictionaries and encyclopaedias.

The first part of Unger’s book is devoted to descriptions of confectionery and confectioners’ shops in Greece and Turkey, the Turkish confectioners’ guilds (for which he quotes from Joseph von Hammer's Constantinopolis und der Bosphoros published in 1822), and his visit to the imperial confectionery kitchen at Topkap? Palace. The confectioner's shop in Nauplia which was recommended to him as 'the best and most acclaimed in all of Greece', sold candied fruit, pulled sugar, dragées, tragacanth sweets, fruit preserves and a range of beverages - coffee, chocolate, punch, lemonade and almond milk. However, he was disappointed to find 'nothing worth introducing at home,’ and it was in hope of doing so that he travelled to Istanbul, where he visited confectionery and helva shops, the former also concocting fruit sherbets.

Unger was given permission to visit the kitchens at Topkap? Palace, but since this was no longer the residence of the sultan he was only able to see 'kitchen hands busy preparing a large amount of coarse sesame helva for the servants'. Moreover, the chief palace confectioner was reluctant to answer questions. The main significance of this visit lies in the fact that Unger saw a confectionery kitchen that is no longer standing today, and his account of it is the only one in existence. Unger later obtained detailed information about palace confectionery from 'a Greek confectioner who had worked for a long time in the Imperial Sugar Bakery.'

He goes on to describe street vendors of sweets, salep, sesame helva, and iced sherbets. In his Concluding Remarks to this section Unger says that although the oriental origin of many items of confectionery produced in Europe, 'especially preserves, pulled sugar, aromatic water etc cannot be denied... what we have learned from the Orientals we have further developed and brought to greater perfection,' but goes on to admit that among the confectionery he has observed some that 'could be new articles for our confectioners' shops'. Others, he says 'because of their dull or overwhelming flavour are difficult for our delicate palates to accept,' or difficult to imitate because their 'ingredients either cannot be found or only at great expense'.

The second part of Unger’s book is devoted to recipes, generally titled by the original Turkish names, consisting of 34 fruit preserves, 29 sherbets, 11 helvas, 2 toffee-like sweets with sesame and chickpeas, 4 Turkish delights, 8 miscellaneous candies, and 9 sweet pastries. The main difficulty with interpreting these recipes today is that confectionery itself has changed almost beyond recognition since the late 19th century. Mechanisation and the rise of chocolate to supremacy over other sweets have relegated many of the techniques, utensils and ingredients to oblivion. Another barrier is the professional secrecy of confectioners—which probably motivated the chief palace confectioner whom Unger tried to question—and which survives to the present day even at modern confectionery factories in Europe. The history of confectionery is therefore shrouded by myth and mystery, and has received hardly any serious attention by culinary researchers, apart from Laura Mason, whose Sugar Plums and Sherbet (Prospect Books 1998) has been invaluable in my research. My commentary to the text includes recipes from other Turkish sources going back to the 15th century which help to reconstruct sketchy recipes by providing additional detail. I have also attempted to trace their history as far as possible. Descriptions of Turkish confectionery by foreign travellers to the Ottoman Empire from the 16th century onwards have been illuminating in some cases. The original intention was merely to annotate the text for modern readers, but soon it became apparent that footnotes could not carry the amount of information necessary to make it fully meaningful. As facts emerged so did new questions. The book was a window onto a lost world waiting to be explored. The mystery of Turkish delight, already becoming known in Europe in Unger’s day, proved an irresistible sidetrack, and using sources going back to the 17th century I have endeavoured to throw light on its evolution in Turkish confectionery and European attempts to imitate it.

One of the Turkish confections Unger describes in greatest detail is lohuk scherbet, which is what we now know as fondant. Unger had evidently never come across anything resembling it in Europe, and devotes an entire section to an enthusiastic general account and numerous recipes using different flavourings. Fondant made a sudden and unexplained appearance in France in the mid-19th century, and Unger’s book was almost certainly the vehicle by which it arrived. He tells his readers that by following his instructions they ‘will be able to make all kinds of lohuk scherbet with the greatest of ease,’ and either he himself of they must have introduced this ancient oriental confection to Europe. Lohuk’s soft creamy texture was entirely new, and being both versatile and simple to make it won immediate popularity.

In conclusion, Unger’s Conditorei des Orients is not only a unique source of outstanding interest for the history of Turkish confectionery, but also for that of Europe. Unger could be compared to so many other Europeans fascinated with the ‘exotic’ orient who introduced things as varied as funfair wheels, tulips and dustpans over the centuries. But just a spirit of inquiry would have got an amateur nowhere with confectionery. Unger differed in being a skilled professional, able to interpret what he saw and describe the techniques, utensils and ingredients with a high degree of accuracy. What omissions and errors there are fade into nothing as compared to his achievement. Reading this book into which Friedrich Unger has poured such a wealth of knowledge, observation and enthusiasm, we can only regret that he never wrote his promised Conditorei des Occidents, which was to be ‘a thorough instruction containing all the branches of our European craft of confectionery.

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