Kebab of Pilgrim Osman

A related dish comes from the first Ottoman cookbook to be published in English. The recipes in Turabi Efendi’s A Turkish Cookery Book (1864) were mostly from Mehmet Kamil’s Melceü’t Tabbahin, A Chef’s Refuge, published twenty years earlier.

Perhaps Osman, who had completed his pilgrimage to Mecca, deserved a treat? The Janissaries, on the other hand, ate meat every day.