Cezerye

Cezerye is a Turkish sweet made by finely processing carrots, cooking them down with sugar, combining them with nuts and shaping the mixture. Cross-sections of pistachios, walnuts and other nuts appear in the soft blocks, which range from orange to dark brown, and many are coated on the outside with shredded coconut. It holds together well enough to be cut into pieces, and the fine carrot comes apart in the mouth as you chew.

Known as a specialty of the southern city of Mersin, it is also given as a gift or taken home as a souvenir. Shapes vary, from small round pieces to cut slabs, but all share the practice of turning carrots into a sweet paste.

Cooking down carrots and shaping them

In cezerye, carrots are not an add-in mixed raw into a baked sweet. They are first cooked until soft, finely ground and then cooked down with sugar. The carrot forms the body of the paste, and the nuts go into it.

The official product description of Mersin cezerye shows carrots being cooked in water and ground, then combined with sugar, glucose and citric acid to make a marmelat-like intermediate. Heat treatment then continues, and walnuts, hazelnuts or Antep pistachios are added before the mixture is rested and shaped. Marmelat here does not mean only a jam containing citrus peel; it refers to the state of a thick paste of cooked fruit flesh.

Because softening the carrots and thickening them with sugar are separate steps, simply coating raw carrots with sugar would not produce the same thing. And since the paste made before the nuts are added forms the body of the sweet, it also differs from confections in which only nuts are bound together with boiled sugar.

The official description also gives specific temperatures and times, but these belong to the production process of a regional product and are not cooking instructions that can be transferred directly to a home pot. In making cezerye, the sequence of cooking and grinding, concentrating with sugar, adding nuts, and resting and shaping is the basis for understanding the finished sweet.

Differences by nut and shape

Mersin’s products are distinguished by shape as well as by the type of nut. There are pistachio, walnut and hazelnut versions, each of which also comes in a ball shape. In thinly sliced pieces, the cross-sections of the nuts spread out, while in rolled pieces, more of the surface is covered by the outer coating of coconut.

Coconut gives a white contrast to the appearance of the carrot-and-sugar paste. Nor are the nuts all ground into powder and mixed in; they remain as pieces within the soft paste. If the proportion of carrot, the way it is cooked down, or the type and size of the nuts differ, the texture changes even under the same name.

Cezerye is sometimes likened to lokum because of its appearance. Whereas lokum is made mainly from sugar and starch, the core ingredient of cezerye is a vegetable paste. It can therefore be understood as a sweet in which you can sense not only springiness but also the presence of finely processed carrot.

Jazariyya in Latakia

In Latakia, on Syria’s Mediterranean coast, there is a closely related confection called jazariyya (الجزرية). Carrots or pumpkin are cooked with sugar and combined with nuts, and it is also used for entertaining guests and as a gift. Whereas the Mersin product defines its characteristics around carrots, descriptions from Latakia include a style that combines pumpkin and carrots.

In the method of Lama Deeb, who makes homemade sweets in Latakia, carrots are grated, water is added and they are cooked, then sugar and starch are added, and coconut and chopped walnuts are mixed in. It is flavored with nutmeg, vanilla, cinnamon and other spices, and the mixture, once it holds together, is put into molds or shaped into balls or pyramids and decorated. In this style, coconut is not only an outer coating but also an ingredient mixed into the inside.

In Latakia, demand rises during Ramadan, and it is also a sweet that people returning home take back with them. The method of cooking vegetables with sugar and setting them is shared, but the vegetables, binders, spices and shaping differ by region and maker.

A story of makers handed down in Tarsus

A Turkish folklore study that interviewed Mersin craftsmen and people involved in culture, commerce and industry in 2005 records a story that in 19th-century Tarsus, the confectioner Şekercizade Hüsnü Efendi and a craftsman from Bukhara made cezerye. It is also said that Hüsnü’s grandson Halim Şekeroğlu gave up teaching to take over the family business, which had passed to him through his father, Kazım. This is an oral account tracing the memories of a family and craftsmen, not a record confirming a 19th-century invention through contemporary sources.

In the same study, the craftsman Halil Kürek, born in 1930, said he learned how to make it as an apprentice from the age of seven. The oral accounts preserve both the passing of the family business from grandfather to grandson and the experience of a young apprentice learning the craft in a workshop. Interviews also say that sailors and emigrants leaving Mersin took the sweet with them as a gift, conveying one route by which the local product became known elsewhere.

A name meaning carrot, and the name of a regional product

The name is said to derive from the Arabic word for carrot. An Arabic word meaning “containing carrot” is linked to the Turkish name. Even though there are variants made with fig or date paste, the carrot-based form is the starting point for understanding the name.

“Mersin Cezeryesi” is a Turkish geographical indication registered as a Mahreç İşareti under registration number 44. Its registration date is January 15, 2003. An amendment finalized in December 2025 changed the production area from the previous “within the territory of the Republic of Türkiye” to “Mersin Province” and specified how packaging is to be labeled. Products currently registered under the name “Mersin Cezeryesi” are made within the province.

The history of cezerye combines a regional confectionery culture that makes use of the sweetness of carrots with its present-day form as a commercial product with standardized processes. Its individuality lies in not leaving the vegetable as just one part of the ingredients but transforming it into the paste that makes up most of the sweet.

Glossary