Dolma and Sarma (Stuffing and Rolling)

Most English-speakers are familiar with a Greek dish called dolmades, which they take to be vine leaves filled with seasoned rice. In Turkey, that’s not a dolma, that’s a sarma. Dolma means ‘stuffed’ and sarma means ‘rolled’. Turks will stuff anything that can be made to have a space in the middle, and anything they can’t stuff (like leaves from grapevines, spinach, or cabbage) they will roll.

Records from the sultan’s palace show that in the fifteenth century Turks were stuffing onions, apples and intestines; in the sixteenth century, zucchini (courgettes), eggplant (aubergine) and butternut pumpkin (squash); in the seventeenth century, mackerel, watermelon and barbunya (red mullet); in the eighteenth, leeks, spinach and quince; and in the nineteenth, melon, okra and lamb ribs.