Turkish Taffy: Pişmaniye, Akide Şekeri and the Real Story

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The candy bar most people picture under the name Turkish taffy was made in New York, not Turkey. The real Turkish sweets that the name should point to are older, stranger and far more interesting: a floss spun from pulled sugar in İzmit, a hard candy once used to test the loyalty of the Sultan’s soldiers, and a spiced paste thrown to crowds from the top of a mosque. This guide sorts out the American candy from the genuine Turkish ones and tells you how each is made.

Was Turkish Taffy ever Turkish?

No. The chewy bar that snaps when you smack it against a table was an American product. Victor Bonomo, whose family ran a confectionery business out of Coney Island, began making it in the early twentieth century, and the bar was developed and sold in the United States. It is closer to a baked nougat of egg white and corn syrup than to a true taffy, and it carried the word Turkish as a marketing flourish, the same way Turkish baths and Turkish tobacco sold an exotic idea. Tootsie Roll later owned the brand and discontinued it, after which smaller owners revived it. None of that history happened in Turkey. So if you came for the candy bar, that is the whole story. The better story starts now.

Pişmaniye, the real Turkish floss

If any Turkish sweet earns the taffy comparison, it is pişmaniye, the pale, melt-in-the-mouth floss sold in domed lumps across the country and most of all in its home city of İzmit, in Kocaeli province.

What it is. Pişmaniye is fine threads of pulled sugar bound with flour that has been roasted golden in butter. The result looks like cotton candy but tastes nutty and buttery, and the texture collapses into a sweet powder on the tongue.
How it is made. Confectioners boil a sugar syrup, pour it into a ring, and pull and fold it like taffy until it lightens. They then work the butter-roasted flour into the ring and keep stretching and folding the loop, doubling the strands each time, until a single ring becomes thousands of hair-fine threads.
The old record. The earliest Turkish mention is a recipe by the physician Şirvani in the 1430s. The İzmit trade grew after Armenian confectioners from Iran settled in the city in the early 1600s. The Kocaeli master Kandıralı Hayri Usta is the first remembered by name, and İbrahim Çınar carried the craft into İzmit itself in 1919. Street vendors still sell it fresh in the city today.
The modern record. İzmit holds a Guinness record for the longest pişmaniye, a single strand of 1,040 metres pulled in 2009, and the name İzmit Pişmaniyesi won its own geographical indication in 2010.

The name carries two stories. One traces it through the Persian peşmek, a word for something wool-like, after the fluffy strands. The other is a local legend about a vendor who built the sweet to win over a plump woman he admired and called it şişmaniye, my plump one; when the courtship failed he renamed it pişmaniye, regret. Around the country you will also hear it called tel helva, çekme helva, tel tel or keten helva.

Akide şekeri and the janissary’s candy

Akide şekeri is the Ottoman boiled sweet, a hard candy flavoured with rosewater, mastic, cinnamon, mint, lemon or fruit. Its name hides a piece of political history.

A word that means covenant. Akide comes from akit, an agreement or pledge. The candy stood for peace and loyalty, a sugar contract.
The loyalty test. On the ulufe days when the janissary corps received their salaries at the palace, their commander presented the Sultan with a bowl of akide candy weighing exactly 400 grams. A full bowl meant the corps still trusted the Sultan. If the Sultan took a piece and ate it, he signalled that he trusted them in return. A short bowl, or a refusal to eat, was read as a warning.
Where to buy it. The Istanbul confectioner Hacı Bekir, founded in 1777, still sells akide şekeri in dozens of flavours from its historic shops, alongside its lokum.

Mesir macunu, the candy thrown from a minaret

The town of Manisa makes a sweet that is half confection and half ritual. Mesir macunu is a dark, spicy paste, a kind of medicinal taffy, tied to a story from the sixteenth century palace there.

The cure. Tradition says the paste was made to cure Hafsa Sultan, mother of Suleiman the Magnificent, who recovered after eating it. She asked that it be shared with the people each spring.
Forty-one spices. A chef and his apprentices prepare the paste from 41 fresh spices and herbs, following the old method. A team of women wrap the pieces in paper while imams bless the batch.
The scramble. Every spring, from 21 to 24 March, the wrapped pieces are scattered from the minaret and domes of the Sultan Mosque while thousands below jostle to catch them. Many believe a caught piece grants a wish for marriage, work or a child within the year.
World heritage. The Mesir Macunu festival was added to the UNESCO list of intangible cultural heritage in 2012.

The wider family of Turkish boiled sweets

Pişmaniye and akide sit inside a deep tradition of sugar work that Turkish confectioners call şekercilik.

Horoz şekeri – the rooster lollipop, a translucent hard candy moulded on a stick, the classic treat handed to children at fairs and holidays.
Kestane şekeri – candied chestnuts from Bursa, glazed in syrup until glossy, a cold-weather luxury.
Cezerye – a chewy set sweet from Mersin made of cooked carrot, sugar and nuts, rolled in coconut.
Badem ezmesi – soft almond paste shaped into fruits and logs, the Turkish answer to marzipan.
Köfter and pestil – grape-must sweets, one a soft jelly and the other a pressed fruit leather, both made at harvest from boiled-down grape juice.

Make it at home: akide-style hard candy

Pişmaniye floss needs two people and practice, but the akide boiled sweet is within reach of a home kitchen.

Ingredients

2 cups sugar
Two-thirds of a cup of water
1 tablespoon lemon juice
A few drops of rosewater, mastic or fruit flavouring
Food colour (optional)

Combine 2 cups of sugar, two-thirds of a cup of water and a tablespoon of lemon juice in a heavy pan.
Heat without stirring until the syrup reaches the hard-crack stage, around 150 degrees Celsius on a sugar thermometer.
Stir in a few drops of rosewater, mastic or fruit flavour, and a little food colour if you like.
Pour the syrup onto an oiled marble slab or lined tray and let it firm at the edges.
While still warm, cut or snip it into small pieces, then leave to harden fully and store airtight away from damp.

Şeker Bayramı: when the sweets come out

These candies are more than street snacks. They sit at the centre of the three-day holiday that closes Ramadan, which Turks call Şeker Bayramı, the Sugar Feast. Households fill bowls with akide, lokum, chocolate and pişmaniye, and children move from door to door across the neighbourhood, kissing the hands of their elders and holding out a bag in return. Boxes of candy and baklava travel between relatives as holiday gifts, and a confectioner’s busiest week of the year falls right before the bayram. The same sugar work shows up at weddings, where sugared almonds and akide are pressed on guests, and at births and circumcision feasts. A Turkish sweet rarely stands alone as dessert; it marks the moment people gather.

These sweets share the tea tray with the rest of the Turkish sugar kitchen. For the wider context read the guide to Turkish cuisine, browse the family of Turkish desserts, and see how sugar and starch make Turkish delight.

Frequently asked questions

Is Turkish taffy Turkish at all?

No. Bonomo’s Turkish Taffy was an American candy made in the United States, with the word Turkish used as a marketing label. The genuine Turkish pulled and boiled sugar sweets are pişmaniye, akide şekeri and mesir macunu.

What is pişmaniye made of?

Pişmaniye is made from sugar and wheat flour. A sugar syrup is pulled like taffy, then flour roasted in butter is worked into it and the mass is stretched into thousands of fine threads.

Why is it called pişmaniye?

The likeliest source is the Persian word pashm, meaning wool, for the fluffy strands. A popular folk tale instead links it to şişmaniye and a confectioner’s failed romance, after which he renamed the sweet pişmaniye, meaning regret.

What is akide şekeri?

Akide şekeri is a hard boiled Ottoman candy flavoured with rosewater, mastic, mint or fruit. Its name comes from akit, meaning a pledge, because the candy once carried a symbolic role in oaths of loyalty between the Sultan and the janissaries.

Is mesir macunu a candy or a medicine?

It began as a herbal remedy made from 41 spices to cure Hafsa Sultan, and it is eaten today as a spiced paste sold in Manisa and scattered at the spring festival. It is a sweet with a medicinal past rather than a modern medicine.