# How is Turkish delight made?

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## Summary

Turkish delight is a gel of starch and sugar flavoured with rosewater, mastic, bergamot or lemon, cut into cubes and dusted with icing sugar.

## Description

Turkish delight, also called lokum, is a family of sweets based on a gel of starch and sugar. It is traditionally set with starch rather than gelatine.
How it is made
Cook the gel. Sugar and starch are cooked together with water into a thick gel: see starch jelly sweets explainedFlavour. Traditional flavours are rosewater, mastic gum, bergamot orange or lemon, and cinnamon and mint are also common.Enrich. Premium varieties bind large amounts of chopped dates, pistachios, hazelnuts or walnuts in the gel.Set and cut. The gel is left to set and then cut into small cubes.Dust. The cubes are dusted with icing sugar, copra, which is dried coconut, or powdered cream of tartar, to stop them clinging to each other.
An old recipe
Sweets like Turkish delight are old. A Byzantine description speaks of a starch candy of sugar dissolved with rosewater, yellow like honey, which resembled modern lokum. According to the Hacı Bekir confectionery company, its founder moved to Constantinople, now Istanbul, and opened his shop in 1777, later making a lokum from starch and sugar, although the sweet historian Tim Richardson has questioned that attribution. Turkish delight spread through the European lands of the Ottoman Empire, and in Greece it is loukoumi, often served with coffee. Rosewater and walnut are the most common flavourings.
The British version
In 1902 Hadji Bey, an Armenian emigrant to Ireland, set up a company, still in existence, to make rahat lokoum for the Irish and later the UK market.
In Britain, one familiar form is chocolate covered. Fry's Turkish Delight, rose flavoured Turkish delight covered in milk chocolate, was launched in 1914 by J. S. Fry and Sons of Bristol, which merged with Cadbury in 1919. From the late 1950s it was advertised on British television with the slogan Full of Eastern Promise. Since August 2010, the bars sold in Britain and Ireland have been made in Poland, after the closure of the Somerdale factory near Bristol: see the Somerdale factory promise
Diet notes
Traditional Turkish delight is set with starch rather than gelatine, but premium kinds contain nuts, and milk chocolate versions contain milk. Check the label: see which sweets contain nuts?

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