Wait this is just regular Turkish ice cream. Normally for tourists (and outside Turkey) they serve it in a cone. I've never actually had it on a plate.
Turkish here. It's hard to believe, but there are different kinds of ice cream in Turkey.
The average ice-cream ("dondurma" in Turkish) you'd get in Turkey is the one you expect: sorbet or gelato, usually in a cone. It's what you'd get when you ask for an ice-cream at a random place.
The one described in this post is a specific kind of ice-cream we call "ice-cream from Maraş" ("Maraş dondurması" in Turkish). Which is great - but the post makes it sound like it is "the Turkish ice-cream" which is a bit misleading. You don't find it everywhere.
The ingredient that makes the ice cream stretchy, salep, can't be purchased readily outside of Turkey.
Supposedly, konjac flour which like salep is also rich in glucomannan, can be used as a substitute to make something very similar. There are some other recipes floating around that uses gellan gum or guar gum as well.
I make my own (low-carb) ice cream, and the mix of inulin and konjac flour does remind me a bit (not trying to emulate it, so it’s really only a bit) of the stretchy Turkish ice cream I've had at fairs.
It’s very unfortunate, and it causes species native to Türkiye to disappear. A lot of the salep you might find shopping is a salep mix, meant to make the drink salep, and is mostly sugar. The history of the salep drink is itself fascinating. A hot salep-based drink was for a while wifely popular in England, but then fell out of favor when it became associated with being a medicine for venereal disease https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salep
Orchids have been consumed since ancient times, in Ancient Greece and probably even earlier.
The name orchid comes from Greek, from orchis (testicles). Each plant has two bulbs, hence the name, and it was considered in ancient times a strong aphrodisiac.
These species of orchids can be found throughout the Mediterranean, and all the way to Iran.
It always piques my interest when I hear of something economically valuable that "cannot be cultivated", as in, I wonder how much "cannot" means "not enough tinkering has been put in to figure out how to cultivate it in a cost-effective manner" as opposed to "impossible". I remember talking to a wasabi farmer in Oregon who claimed to have been one of the first to grow a crop "that can't be cultivated outside Japan" outside Japan.
It seems doubly worthwhile to experiment with in this case since it would both keep a food tradition viable and protect the orchid species from disappearing. When I google Orchis mascula I do find info about cultivation (though cultivation on a commercial scale might be a different matter).
Wild orchids are like wild mushrooms. They generate tiny spores that cannot grow on their own, and require help from a third party in the soil.
Wild orchids require fungi in the soil to help them grow. They are not self-sufficient in terms of chlorophyll.
Wild orchids have the weirdest pollination requirements. They require specific species of insects (bees, wasps) and the common bee cannot help. As they do not have enough nectar or pollen, they are trying to attract insects through trickery. Either pheromones, looking like a female insect of the same species, faking nectar, you name it.
Dondurma literally means "ice cream" and it's just like regular ice cream like the rest of the world: served with a cone with scoops of it. So the word "dondurma" doesn't directly translate to the particular kind in question, it just translates to regular ice cream.
The ice cream in question is a special traditional form of it from a particular area. In rest of Turkey, dondurma (ice cream) is just like rest of the world, not like this. This one is lovely though, I'd recommend it especially for the texture.
> Dondurma literally means "ice cream" and it's just like regular ice cream like the rest of the world: served with a cone with scoops of it. So the word "dondurma" doesn't directly translate to the particular kind in question, it just translates to regular ice cream.
This is true generally of most foreign terms. Americans believe "gelato" is supposed to be something different from ordinary "ice cream".
This is true only in the sense that pain is "not the same thing" as what Americans typically call "bread". Or in other words, complete nonsense.
No American would hesitate to call Italian ice cream "ice cream", nor would any Italian hesitate to call American ice cream "gelato". Each term includes the other one.
They are different things and anyone that has eaten both would agree. They aren’t just different words for the same thing. The difference is more akin to Neapolitan pizza and New York pizza: both fall under the category of “pizza” but they are different things.
I have never actually heard that term, and it makes me think of a custard that's been frozen, which appears to be wrong. Freezing a custard would ruin it.
But on the assumption that you mean ice cream with eggs in it, in the US that's called "ice cream", though only the flavor called "french vanilla" would usually include eggs. The eggs are the distinction between "french vanilla" and "vanilla".
If you try to translate "gelato" to English literally, you can say it means "frozen". While "dondurma" also can be translated as "frozen" to the English. I don't know why Americans called it "ice-cream".
When I see the term "ice-cream", I think of cold white creamy thing on a cone that you can buy from fast food chains. That is different from what we call "dondurma" here in Turkey. That is much softer and more creamy than "dondurma".
Turkish people probably saw the dessert from Europeans. At least that's what Nisanyan says.
> When I see the term "ice-cream", I think of cold white creamy thing on a cone that you can buy from fast food chains. That is different from what we call "dondurma" here in Turkey. That is much softer and more creamy than "dondurma".
What you get from fast food chains would be called "soft-serve ice cream" in the US, if you want to be explicit about it. (If you want a shorter term, then "ice cream" if you don't care about the distinction, but "soft-serve" if you do.) It is not the standard form of ice cream - ice cream stores don't sell it - but it is included within the term "ice cream".
it used to be so that in order for a product to be called "dondurma" (ice cream) it had to have salep in it. all other regular ice cream had to be sold under the name "buz" (ice).
On the West Coast (Izmir, Dikili, Cesme, Bodrum) it is custom. It is sometimes called Italian or Roman ice cream, even though I never ate this ice cream in Italy. My two little girls picked this one even up, so it is custom right now, and I think since at least 30 years.
When you say "literally" i understand "word for word", and dondurma does not match "ice cream" in this sense, I think. It is a noun produced in a transition form like "don-mak (to freeze, passive) -> don-dur (to freeze sth-active) -> don-dur-ma (noun)".
The Maras Dondurma sellers in the stalls also like to mess around, especially with kids and put on a show. For example, the give you the ice cream in two cones (stacked on top of each other), and then pull up their big spoon (see one of the pics in the article). Because the ice cream is sticky, it pulls the upper cone with it, and you're left holding an empty cone.
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[ 117 ms ] story [ 226 ms ] threadThe average ice-cream ("dondurma" in Turkish) you'd get in Turkey is the one you expect: sorbet or gelato, usually in a cone. It's what you'd get when you ask for an ice-cream at a random place.
The one described in this post is a specific kind of ice-cream we call "ice-cream from Maraş" ("Maraş dondurması" in Turkish). Which is great - but the post makes it sound like it is "the Turkish ice-cream" which is a bit misleading. You don't find it everywhere.
Supposedly, konjac flour which like salep is also rich in glucomannan, can be used as a substitute to make something very similar. There are some other recipes floating around that uses gellan gum or guar gum as well.
Whatever is sold as "salep" everywhere is just some sugar powder perhaps just a little with actual salep as 100% salep is extremely expensive.
If you find it, that will very likely be fake and would have nothing to do with actual salep.
Currently the production of salep is not sustainable.
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/orchids-salep
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/04/dining/salep.html
The name orchid comes from Greek, from orchis (testicles). Each plant has two bulbs, hence the name, and it was considered in ancient times a strong aphrodisiac.
These species of orchids can be found throughout the Mediterranean, and all the way to Iran.
https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-18255-7_...
It seems doubly worthwhile to experiment with in this case since it would both keep a food tradition viable and protect the orchid species from disappearing. When I google Orchis mascula I do find info about cultivation (though cultivation on a commercial scale might be a different matter).
Wild orchids require fungi in the soil to help them grow. They are not self-sufficient in terms of chlorophyll.
Wild orchids have the weirdest pollination requirements. They require specific species of insects (bees, wasps) and the common bee cannot help. As they do not have enough nectar or pollen, they are trying to attract insects through trickery. Either pheromones, looking like a female insect of the same species, faking nectar, you name it.
The ice cream in question is a special traditional form of it from a particular area. In rest of Turkey, dondurma (ice cream) is just like rest of the world, not like this. This one is lovely though, I'd recommend it especially for the texture.
This is true generally of most foreign terms. Americans believe "gelato" is supposed to be something different from ordinary "ice cream".
Of course it's the Italian word for "ice cream".
"Gelato" can be both the Italian word for "ice cream" and be something different from what is typically referred to as "ice cream" in the US, no?
No American would hesitate to call Italian ice cream "ice cream", nor would any Italian hesitate to call American ice cream "gelato". Each term includes the other one.
But on the assumption that you mean ice cream with eggs in it, in the US that's called "ice cream", though only the flavor called "french vanilla" would usually include eggs. The eggs are the distinction between "french vanilla" and "vanilla".
When I see the term "ice-cream", I think of cold white creamy thing on a cone that you can buy from fast food chains. That is different from what we call "dondurma" here in Turkey. That is much softer and more creamy than "dondurma".
Turkish people probably saw the dessert from Europeans. At least that's what Nisanyan says.
https://www.nisanyansozluk.com/kelime/dondurma
What you get from fast food chains would be called "soft-serve ice cream" in the US, if you want to be explicit about it. (If you want a shorter term, then "ice cream" if you don't care about the distinction, but "soft-serve" if you do.) It is not the standard form of ice cream - ice cream stores don't sell it - but it is included within the term "ice cream".
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/soft_serve
Here's some promotional imagery showing the kind of thing an American would think of when prompted with "ice cream": https://www.baskinrobbins.com/content/dam/br/img/w72024_rele...
It's hard enough that people make birthday cakes out of it.
i wonder if this is still the case.