Höşmerim

Höşmerim is the name of a sweet dish found in many parts of Turkey. The version from Balıkesir in particular combines fresh unsalted cheese with semolina, sugar, egg yolks and other ingredients, and is heated in a pan while being worked. With neither a baked crust nor a syrup coating, it becomes a soft yellow sweet in which fine milky granules and grain are mixed together.

Using Freshly Curdled Milk

The Balıkesir method is connected to the stage of making cheese from cow’s or sheep’s milk. Rennet is added to warmed milk, and the set teleme is broken up and drained. The sweet uses this unsalted curd before it becomes a cheese that is aged and cut.

Teleme retains a lot of moisture. It is finely crumbled in a pan, mixed with eggs and semolina, and heated while being stirred so that the bottom does not scorch. As heating continues, the milk lumps become finer, fat seeps out, and the consistency of the whole mixture changes. The process runs from curdling the milk to loosening that curd and cooking it.

Semolina, coarsely ground grains of wheat, absorbs the moisture of the milk as it is heated and binds the sweet together. Some methods also use wheat flour. In one example given by the Balıkesir Directorate of Culture and Tourism, the cheese and egg yolks are heated slowly before the semolina, wheat flour and sugar are added. In another method recorded on site, eggs and flour are mixed into the curd before it goes on the heat, and sugar is added around the time the fat comes out and the mixture begins to pull away from the bottom of the pan. There are several methods, in which the heating and the order of ingredients are decided by watching the state of the milk.

The yellow color is not necessarily determined by egg yolks alone; some versions use saffron or coloring. Even when the yellow appearance is shared, ingredient labeling and production methods differ. Home recipes (ingredient proportions and methods) vary in how flour is used and in the order of heating, and products from the region that hold a geographical indication have specifications for each registered name.

A Land Tied to Dairy Work

Balıkesir is a province in western Turkey facing the Sea of Marmara and the Aegean Sea. Höşmerim has been handed down in connection with the dairy practices of the region’s Yörük. It was made as part of the spring-to-summer work of milking sheep, and some makers prefer höşmerim made in late spring, when the milk becomes richer.

The “Book of Travels” of the 17th-century traveler Evliya Çelebi is also said to contain a passage linking this sweet to Turkmen settlers.

In the cookbook Ağdiye Risalesi, written in 1775–78, cheese höşmerim was listed together with telmüş, the name used by shepherds, and sündürme, the name used by the Yörük. The latter name also survives in an 1844 cookbook. The same curd sweet had different names among the people who worked with milk, and these names were recorded in books as well.

An 1844 Method That Adds Sweetness Afterward

Mehmed Kâmil’s cookbook Melceü’t-Tabbâhîn (published 1844) contains a recipe that also calls höşmerim sündürme. Fresh unsalted cheese or teleme is crumbled by hand and stirred over a charcoal fire, and when it begins to melt, a small amount of fine wheat flour is added. When the fat comes out and the mixture begins to stretch like a pulled-sugar confection, it is taken off the heat.

This cookbook also describes adding sugar or honey at the time of eating. The method typical in Balıkesir today, in which sugar is cooked down together in the pan, is not the only old form. A method that separates the stage of heating and stretching the milk from the stage of adding sweetness survives in a 19th-century record.

A Folk Tale of a Couple Behind the Name

A folk story explaining the name tells of a wife who used the ingredients she had on hand to make a sweet and served it to her husband, who had long been away at war. Her question, “Hoş mu erim?”, meaning “Is it good, dear?”, is said to have become the name of the sweet.

This is a tradition that links the name to a couple’s reunion and hospitality. Separately, there is also an explanation connecting the name to the Persian hoş (sweet, pleasant) and maram, a word said to refer to cream. However, the explanation of the latter element as cream is disputed, and the origin of the word has not been settled. The story fitted to the sound of the name and the etymological explanation of the word’s components have been handed down separately.

Some Versions with the Same Name Use No Cheese

Höşmerim cannot be regarded as the same cheese sweet throughout Turkey. In Çankırı, wheat flour is toasted in butter, water with rock salt dissolved in it is added and the mixture is cooked through, and honey with honeycomb is placed on top while it is hot. It uses none of the eggs, semolina, rennet or sugar found in the typical Balıkesir formula, and its sweetness is added with honey.

The honey is placed on the hot flour mixture so that it melts slowly and the sweetness soaks in. Salt is also a defining feature of this region’s version. The Balıkesir version, in which milk curd is broken up and cooked, and the Çankırı version, in which flour is toasted in fat and honey is added, start from different ingredients even if the pans used are similar. The Sivrihisar version is made by toasting a high-fat cream from cow’s milk with flour and a very small amount of salt, and grape pekmez is poured over the top. It is served freshly made after meals, and on festival mornings it also accompanies the meal for which families gather at the home of an elder relative. Besides differences in ingredients and process—cooked curd, toasted flour, toasted cream—there are also regional differences in when it is made and served.

Glossary