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From the Palace Kitchen to Today's Table

Most visitors to Topkapı Palace head straight for the Treasury, the Harem and the terrace over the Bosphorus. The row of chimneys rising along the right side of the Second Courtyard usually ends up as a single snapshot.

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From the Palace Kitchen to Today's Table

Most visitors to Topkapı Palace head straight for the Treasury, the Harem and the terrace over the Bosphorus. The row of chimneys rising along the right side of the Second Courtyard usually ends up as a single snapshot. Yet under those chimneys, for centuries, food was cooked every day for thousands of people, sherbets were boiled and halva was stirred. This piece tells the story of the Ottoman palace kitchen, the Matbah-ı Amire, as far as the sources allow: how it was organised, which dishes can be read in its account books, how the table was laid, and what passed from this kitchen to the Istanbul table of today. At the end you will find practical notes on visiting the kitchens now.

The Chimneys on the Right of the Second Courtyard

Matbah-ı Amire was not the name of a single kitchen. It was the institution that ran the kitchens, the confectionery (helvahane), the larders, the bakeries and a string of workshops. According to the entry in the TDV Encyclopedia of Islam, the palace kitchens stood on the right side of the Second Courtyard and were covered with ten domes and ten conical caps. Three doors led from the courtyard into the kitchen street: the larder door, the privy kitchen door and the confectionery door. Inside the complex there was also a mosque used by the cooks and a small masjid for the confectioners.

The kitchens were first built with four domes under Mehmed II. A fire in June 1574 left them largely in ruins, and Mimar Sinan then rebuilt them on a larger scale. The English Wikipedia article on Topkapı notes that Sinan added two rows of twenty wide chimneys in this rebuilding. The line of chimneys you see behind the colonnade today is largely the legacy of that phase. Turkish sources put the kitchen section at about 5,250 square metres, and the same English article states that the kitchens served around 4,000 people a day with a staff of more than 800.

A Kitchen as Crowded as a Town

The kitchen staff was organised like a military unit. Most cooks were recruited from the acemi oğlanları, the novice corps, and rose from apprentice (şakird) to journeyman to master. Each kitchen had its head cook, and above them all stood the chief cook. Income, expenses, supplies and the year end accounts were handled by an official called the emin. When the sultan went on campaign, the emin travelled with his staff and left a deputy in Istanbul.

The kitchens were divided by who they served. The privy kitchen was the main kitchen of the palace household, where the best ingredients were used, and the sultan's own meals were cooked in its section called the kuşhane. The palace aghas, the pages of the inner palace and the officials of the Imperial Council each had their own kitchens. The figures in the TDV entry show how the institution grew: a kitchen staff of 629 in the last years of Süleyman the Magnificent had reached 1,300 by the middle of the 17th century.

Consumption grew at the same pace. In the first half of the 16th century the palace used about 20,000 sheep and lambs a year; by the first half of the 17th century this had risen to 100,000, alongside some 150,000 chickens. Mutton and chicken were preferred, while beef went mostly into pastırma. Supplies came from every corner of the empire. Most of the rice and much of the sugar came from Egypt, clarified butter from Kefe in Crimea, olive oil from the Aegean coast and eggs from İzmit. Amasya apples and Mardin plums were brought from far away, and snow and ice for chilling food and sherbets were carried from the mountains and lakes around Bursa.

Spending rose steeply. According to the TDV entry, the kitchen's annual budget was between 1.2 and 1.5 million akçe at the end of the 15th century and reached 46 million akçe in the second half of the 17th. The institution was turned into a directorate on 26 April 1838 and attached to the mint, and it disappeared with the founding of the Republic.

The Back Streets of the Kitchen

Picturing the palace kitchen only as cooks at the stove would miss most of it. Around the Matbah-ı Amire were units that each handled one task, and the TDV entry lists them one by one.

  • Larders. There were two, an outer and an inner one. Valuable goods such as sugar and spices were kept in the inner larder under the head larder keeper. At the end of the 16th century the larders employed 200 keepers and 64 apprentices.
  • Bakeries. Between the Imperial Gate and the Middle Gate stood the ovens, where fine bread for the sultan was made from the best wheat and plainer loaves for the staff. The records mention pide, girde, boğaça, börek and simit, and much of the wheat and flour came from Bursa.
  • Butchers and poulterers. Sheep were slaughtered and prepared by the palace's own butchers, and in the first half of the 17th century the poultry house in the Hasbahçe garden prepared 400 to 450 chickens a day.
  • Yoghurt makers and greengrocers. Dairy products were made in a yoghurt house near Sultanahmet under a head yoghurt maker, and vegetables were gathered in a store run by a head greengrocer.
  • Tinsmiths and water carriers. The craftsmen who tinned the copper pots and the water carriers who supplied the kitchen formed separate companies on the payroll.

The picture shows that the palace kitchen worked much like a production plant. For one dish to reach the table it had to pass through dozens of hands, from the larder to the oven and from the butcher to the tinsmith.

Halva, Sherbet and Paste

The most colourful part of the kitchen street was the helvahane. It made far more than halva: sherbets, preserves, medicinal pastes, pickles, remedies and even scented soaps were the confectioners' work. Sherbets were made from flowers such as violet, rose and water lily and from fruits such as mulberry, quince and sour cherry. According to the TDV entry, the most famous halva was zülbaye helvası, and the records also mention baş helvası, zerd helvası and chestnut halva. The confectionery employed 18 halva makers at the start of the second half of the 16th century and between 85 and 90 people in the first half of the 17th.

Observers of the time noted the sherbet culture too. Notes compiled by İlknur Haydaroğlu relate that sherbet essences were kept in crystal jugs and drunk by stirring a spoonful or two into a glass of water, with musk, ambergris and pieces of fruit added alongside sugar for flavour and scent. The study by Aysu Hatipoğlu and Orhan Batman stresses that the most common drinks in the palace kitchen were water, sherbet and syrup. The importance of cold drinks also explains why the snow and ice carried from Bursa were recorded so carefully.

What the Account Books Tell

Most of what we know about the palace kitchen comes not from cookbooks but from account books. Cooks passed their knowledge from master to journeyman to apprentice, and researchers note that most of them could not read or write. Instead of measured recipes, what survives are purchase lists kept day by day. They show what was bought on which day and at what price, and the names of dishes often have to be read between the lines.

According to writers who have quoted the expense books of Mehmed II's reign, in June 1469 ingredients were bought for dishes such as mutancana with onions, fish cooked with onion and garlic, kabuni with chickpeas, burani with spinach and chicken kalye for the sultan's table. Most of the names are Arabic or Persian. The studies cited by Hatipoğlu and Batman also note that Persian and Arab cuisines strongly shaped the palace table in the early centuries, that honey and vinegar met in the same dish in the classical period, and that fruit was used generously in stews. The TDV entry says little fish was eaten at the palace, yet the same studies point to a marked interest in fish, caviar and shrimp under Mehmed II.

The books can be surprisingly detailed. A register from the summer of 1681, studied by Gülser Oğuz, records a month of vegetable and fruit purchases for the palace kitchen day by day, with weights and prices, listing several varieties of grapes, squash, beans and pears separately. Mehmet Kavak's study of zirbaç calculates, from a kitchen register of 1555 to 1556, that more than two tonnes of ingredients were set aside for the zirbaç cooked on the first day of Muharram for the novices at the İbrahim Paşa Palace.

Zirbaç is a curious case: it appears in the sources as a cumin flavoured meat dish and, after the 16th century, turns into a starchy, jelly like dessert. Kavak notes that madrasa students and ordinary people called it zırva, and adds that the idea that the Turkish verb for talking nonsense, zırvalamak, comes from it rests on no firm evidence. The dish is still kept alive in the cuisine of Edirne.

Eating from the Sini, Sealed Dishes

The Ottoman palace had no dining room in the Western sense. A clean cloth was spread on the floor, a low stand placed on it and a wide round tray called a sini set on top. No more than five or six people sat around one tray, and everyone ate from the dish in the middle. Some sultans, such as Ahmed III and Selim III, are known to have had private dining rooms, but this was the general arrangement.

Two meals a day were eaten at the palace, one in the late morning and one after the afternoon prayer. Hands were washed and a prayer said before and after the meal, with servants waiting with water and towels. After the table was cleared came coffee, and the meal ended with rose water and fragrance; the rose water sprinklers and censers you see in museums belong to this custom. Eating on the floor produced the sini, eating from a shared dish produced large platters, and the many liquid foods such as soups, compotes and sherbets produced bowls with different names.

The sultan usually ate alone in the Privy Chamber or on terraces and in gardens. Haydaroğlu relates that security was tightened from the reign of Murad III, and dishes bound for the sultan were covered with clean cloths and sealed by senior officials such as the head larder keeper and the head cook before being carried. The fabric of the cloth, whether the tray was silver and the value of the dishes all signalled the status of those at the table. Cold olive oil starters were rare on the classical palace table; Hatipoğlu and Batman note that much of the olive oil brought to the palace was burned in lamps, and clarified butter dominated the cooking.

Feasts, Zerde and Pilaf

At weddings and festivals the palace kitchen opened to the whole city. At the feast for the circumcision of Süleyman the Magnificent's sons in 1539, according to a study quoting Stefanos Yerasimos, seven of the thirty six dishes were pilafs. The dessert course alone offered fifty three kinds, including fifteen kinds of halva and twenty preserves, using 60 kantar, about 3,400 kilograms, of sugar. Kavak's study records that zirbaç was also served at this feast.

At festivals, food for the public was carried from the palace kitchen to the Hippodrome, the crowd was lined up and the meal began to the sound of drums. The pairing of saffron yellow zerde and pilaf was the emblem of joyful days: it was served in public kitchens and at feasts, and handed out to the Janissaries on pay days. The name zerde comes from the Persian word for yellow, and writers note that it was favoured on special days because saffron recalled the sun and gold.

The Palace in Ramadan and on Feast Days

The best known food ceremony of the palace calendar fell on the fifteenth day of Ramadan. According to Reşad Ekrem Koçu's Istanbul Encyclopedia, in a custom dating back to Süleyman's reign, baklava made in the palace kitchen was presented to the troops in Istanbul on the occasion of the visit to the Holy Mantle, one tray for every ten men. The trays were collected in a ceremony and carried away on poles by two men from each unit. Koçu writes that this Baklava Procession was one of the entertainments Istanbul's people looked forward to each year, filling the streets with crowds. The last procession took place on 21 April 1826, a month and a half before the Janissary corps was abolished.

Accounts of iftar tables are revealing too. Haydaroğlu, quoting Balıkhane Nazırı Ali Rıza Bey, relates that when Mahmud II dined at the mansion of Dürrizade Abdullah Molla on a day in Ramadan, he saw that the compote served after the pilaf was not chilled with ice cubes, which would dilute it, but served in a bowl carved from ice. The same sources mention caviar on iftar tables. According to Kavak, the imarets, the public kitchens, also served special dishes such as zirbaç to the people during Ramadan, on the Night of Power, on the two religious feasts and on the holy nights. That baklava, today the sweet of so many special days, had such a place in the palace calendar is a good clue to the roots of our tables today.

The Door to Alafranga

From the 18th century onwards the sultans spent less time at Topkapı and preferred the palaces on the Bosphorus, whose kitchens came to the fore. In the 19th century Westernisation reached the kitchen as well. Hatipoğlu and Batman relate that in 1837 Mahmud II sent Hüseyin, one of the palace cooks, to Vienna to learn Western cooking; he stayed there until 1839. In the second half of the century French cuisine became the choice at banquets for foreign guests, invitations were sent out and the order of dishes appeared on printed menus. New table tools such as asparagus tongs are traces of this period.

The same century saw the first printed cookbook in Turkish. Melceü't-Tabbahin by Mehmed Kamil, a teacher at the Imperial School of Medicine, was published in 1844; it compiled older handwritten recipes, trimmed what was superfluous and added side dishes such as salads, pickles and tarator. According to the Turkish Wikipedia article on Ottoman palace cuisine, after the Second Constitutional period the daily palace menu consisted of soup, chicken, pilaf, seasonal vegetables, börek, a sweet, milk pudding, a cold dish and milk. The list is striking for how close it is to an Istanbul household table today.

Dishes That Moved from the Palace to the City

There was never a sharp line between palace cuisine and Istanbul cuisine. Judges, governors and pashas posted to the provinces took the capital's cooking with them and brought back regional dishes they liked. Some dishes that still carry their names today are products of that exchange, but it pays to separate legend from record when reading the stories behind the names.

  • Hünkar beğendi. The name of this dish, meat served on a smoky aubergine purée, is usually explained by two stories. One ties it to Empress Eugénie's visit to Istanbul in 1869, the other to the reign of Murad IV. Neither is backed by documents. Food historian Ceren Bozkurt notes that the earliest known written recipe appears in Urbain Dubois's book of 1872, and that this first recipe contains no béchamel.
  • İmam bayıldı. Several folk tales explain the name of this olive oil aubergine dish: the imam is said to have fainted from the taste, from the cost of the oil, or when the oil brought as a dowry ran out. These are stories about the name, not historical records.
  • Aşure and zerde. Aşure is among the desserts that came down from the palace kitchen with little change; the palace also made varieties no longer cooked, such as strained aşure. Zerde, according to Hatipoğlu and Batman, now survives mainly as a sweet handed out at weddings in the Konya region.
  • Dishes with ethnic names. Circassian chicken, Tatar börek, Albanian liver and Laz börek are known to have been made in the palace kitchen. Researchers point out that today's versions are not identical to their original forms.
  • Baklava. Hatipoğlu and Batman note that baklava is rarely named in sources before the 18th century; at the time it was an ordinary sweet handed out to the Janissaries on the fifteenth day of Ramadan. Today it is still served on many special days.

Visiting the Kitchens at Topkapı Today

The palace kitchens are part of the visitor route at Topkapı Palace, now run by the Presidency of National Palaces. Once you pass through the Middle Gate into the Second Courtyard, the kitchens lie on the right, behind the colonnade. The Matbah-ı Amire buildings, comprehensively restored in 2010, have recently been rearranged: curatorial work intensified in 2025 and was completed in 2026, and the Şerbethane, part of the confectionery, reopened with a renewed display in July 2026. The number of objects on show there rose from 174 to 452. Sherbet vessels, Chinese and European porcelain, and pieces in gold, brass, glass and silver can be seen together.

For many years the kitchens also housed the palace's famous porcelain collection, and lack of space meant only a small part of it could be shown. According to the Presidency of National Palaces, these pieces, counted among the largest collections of Chinese porcelain outside China, are being prepared for display in a Porcelain Museum at the Darphane-i Amire, the old mint in the First Courtyard. Since the opening date and the halls open in the kitchens on any given day may change, check the official National Palaces website before you go.

Inside the Harem, on the Golden Road, the Kuşhane Kitchen has also opened after restoration. According to archival documents, special meals for the sultan were prepared in this small kitchen, food from the main kitchens was made ready for serving here, and it was used when food was needed at night. It now displays the silver kuşhane pots said to have given it its name, along with brass and copper vessels, and a figure in period costume shows how the kitchen was used.

Practical Notes for Following the Palace Kitchen

  • Topkapı Palace is closed on Tuesdays. Check current opening hours, tickets and Harem entry on the official National Palaces website.
  • Plan the kitchens as a stop of their own in the Second Courtyard rather than a corridor you hurry through. Stand under the colonnade and look at the line of chimneys before you go in; the scale of the building reads better from outside.
  • As you look at the vessels in the Şerbethane, remember the confectionery's sherbet list: violet, rose, water lily, mulberry, quince, sour cherry. Every vessel on display is a clue to how these drinks were served.
  • Leave a few minutes of your Harem visit for the Kuşhane Kitchen; it is easy to miss on the Golden Road.
  • To see the world the palace's spices and dried fruit came from, walk down to the Spice Bazaar in Eminönü after your visit. Its stalls sell saffron, cinnamon, black pepper and ginger, all named in the palace records.
  • When you see hünkar beğendi, Circassian chicken, olive oil aubergine or zerde on the menu of a tradesmen's restaurant, remember the stories behind the names; these are dishes that travelled between the palace and the city.
  • If you find yourself in Edirne, look for zirbaç there. According to Kavak, this old palace and imaret dish is still kept alive in Edirne's cuisine.

Sources

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