Food · Curated list
Pilaf, Turkish coffee, Ayran and 22 more, ranked by how much of the world has written about each one.
Most written-about first. Each description summarises the dish or drink's Wikipedia article, which its name links to.
1
Rice dish in which grains do not stick
A dish of rice, or in some regions of wheat, usually cooked in broth or stock with spices and other ingredients such as meat and vegetables, using some method to keep the cooked grains from sticking together.
Wikidata · Photo: Mizu basyo at Japanese Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0
2
Coffee brewing method without filters
Coffee made in a pot called a cezve from very finely ground beans, without filtering. It goes by different names across the Caucasus, the Balkans and the Middle East.
3
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4
Meat dish
Also spelled döner kebab, a Turkish dish of meat cooked on an upright rotisserie: seasoned meat, stacked into an upside-down cone, turns slowly beside a vertical heating element.
Wikidata · Photo: AleGranholm, CC BY 2.0
5
Dish of cabbage leaves with a filling
Cooked cabbage leaves rolled around one of many fillings, common in the cooking of Central, Eastern and Southeastern Europe, much of Western Asia, Northern China and parts of North Africa.
Wikidata · Photo: Burkhard Mücke, CC BY-SA 4.0
6
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Sweetened, anise-flavored Turkish alcoholic drink
An alcoholic drink of grape pomace, distilled twice and flavoured with aniseed. A national drink of Turkey, it is especially popular along the coasts.
Wikidata · Photo: Garrett Ziegler, CC BY-SA 4.0
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9
Levantine dish of cooked eggplant
Also spelled baba ganoush or baba ghanouj, a Levantine starter of finely chopped roasted aubergine (eggplant) with tahini, lemon juice, olive oil and various seasonings. The aubergine is traditionally roasted, baked or grilled over an open flame before peeling, which leaves the flesh soft and smoky.
Wikidata · Photo: Serge Melki from Indianapolis, USA, CC BY 2.0
10
Sausage of Balkan to Central Asian origin
Also spelled sugou or sucuk (/suːˈd͡ʒʊk/), a dry, spicy, fermented Turkish sausage eaten in several Anatolian, Balkan, Middle Eastern and Central Asian cuisines. It is mostly ground meat and animal fat, usually from lamb or beef; beef is the main meat in Turkey, Egypt, Sudan, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Albania, Georgia, Bulgaria, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan.
Wikidata · Photo: Rainer Zenz, CC BY-SA 3.0
11
Middle Eastern variety of ice cream
The Turkish word for ice cream; in Arabic it is Booza. Outside the Middle East it usually means mastic ice cream in particular, often thought to come from the city and region of Kahramanmaraş, and called maraş dondurma in Turkish.
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Turkish aubergine dish
A dish of Ottoman cooking: a whole aubergine stuffed with tomatoes, garlic and onion and simmered in olive oil. A zeytinyağlı dish, it is found across most of the old Ottoman lands.
Wikidata · Photo: AlexanderVanLoon, CC BY-SA 4.0
14
Traditional fried dough of Central Asian and Middle Eastern cuisines
A food of fried dough eaten across Central Asia, Mongolia, Idel-Ural and the Middle East, known by many spellings, among them borsok, boorsok, baursak, baursaq, bauyrsaq and boorsoq.
Wikidata · Photo: Brücke-Osteuropa, Public domain
15
Sour dairy product, popular in Central Asia and Northern Middle East
A range of dairy products popular in Central Asian, Caucasian and Iranian cooking, known by many names, among them khuruud, aaruul, chortan, shilanch, jameed, qurut, qurt, kurut, kurt, kishk and kashk. It is made by shaping strained yogurt, or drained buttermilk or sour milk, and leaving it to dry.
Wikidata · Photo: Paul Munhoven, CC BY-SA 3.0
16
Semi-hard cheese from the Balkans
A cheese made from the milk of goats, sheep or cows, or a mix of them, popular in the Levant, Turkey and the Balkans. In Hungary the word means this cheese only; elsewhere in the Balkans, and in Turkey and the Levant, it is often used for all yellow cheeses.
17
Roe-based meze common to Turkey and Greece
Also spelled taramosalata, a meze made from tarama, the salted, cured roe of grey mullet (bottarga), carp or cod, mixed with lemon juice, olive oil and a starchy base of potatoes or bread, or sometimes almonds.
Wikidata · Photo: Robert Kindermann, CC BY-SA 2.5
18
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20
Stuffed dish
Leaves rolled around a filling of grains such as rice, of minced meat, or of both, best known in their forms of stuffed cabbage leaves and stuffed vine or grape leaves. In English it sometimes goes by sarma, its Turkish name, which, the dish being an Ottoman one, is also used in Armenian and in some languages of Eastern Europe.
Wikidata · Photo: Garrett Ziegler, CC BY-SA 4.0
21
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23
Dish involving filling the cavities of a bell pepper with other food
A dish found in many cuisines: bell peppers, hollowed or halved, filled with one of many fillings, often meat, rice, cheese, vegetables or sauce.
Wikidata · Photo: Alice Wiegand, CC BY-SA 4.0
24
Turkish savory flatbread
A savoury Turkish stuffed turnover. Its dough is usually unleavened, made just of water, salt and flour, though it can also be made from yeast dough.
Wikidata · Photo: Maderibeyza, CC BY-SA 3.0
25
Every Wikidata item that is a dish, drink, dessert or cheese whose cuisine, on Wikidata, is Turkish cuisine, or whose country of origin is Turkey, and that has its own English Wikipedia article, ranked by the number of Wikimedia sites with a page about it — Wikipedia's language editions, mostly, and sister projects such as Wikiquote. That counts how many communities independently thought it worth describing, and nobody can buy a place on it. The top 25 are shown.
Fetched from Wikidata on 2026-09-25. Each description is this site's summary of the entry's Wikipedia article, which its name links to: the wording is ours, the facts are Wikipedia's, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. To correct an entry, correct it there; the next refresh carries the change.
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