ABSTRACT
Turkish cuisine is distinguished by its wide variety of desserts. A foreign friend once remarked that two kinds of establishment are particularly common in Turkish cities, pastry shops and drugstores, and jokingly suggested that the former necessitated the latter. Whether this is true or not, there can be no doubt about the importance of pastries and sweets in Turkey. Rich, sweet pastries such as baklava are relatively well known in the West. But almost completely unknown are the dairy desserts, which are specially delightful and refreshing and more easily digested than items like baklava that use butter, nuts, and syrup liberally. These two main categories of dessert are sold in different shops: pastahaneler offer pastries (both Turkish and European) for sale; muhallebiciler, dairy desserts. The making of some pastries, notably baklava, is so complex that it requires a further degree of specialization; separate shops are devoted to these desserts alone. Such specialization is often cultivated within a family and handed down from one generation to the next.
