Spices in Turkish cooking

Widespread from Turkey through the Levant to Mexico, where cassia is boiled with the grounds rather than added after. It softens the bitterness without sweetening, which is a different effect from adding sugar.

Add alongside: Green cardamom, Cloves, Nutmeg

Aubergine is spongy and absorbs fat readily, which makes it an efficient carrier for anything bloomed in oil. Cumin is the base note from baba ganoush through baingan bharta to Sichuan yuxiang aubergine — three traditions that agree without contact.

Add alongside: Garlic, Coriander seed, Sesame seed

Roast aubergine is rich and slightly flat, and it wants acid rather than more depth. Sumac supplies sourness without liquid, which is the whole reason it exists as a seasoning and why a squeeze of lemon is not the same thing.

Add alongside: Sesame seed, Garlic, Yoghurt

Smoked paprika and aubergine is a Spanish and Balkan pairing, and it works because the smoke reinforces what charring the aubergine already started. On unroasted aubergine the effect largely disappears.

Add alongside: Garlic, Tomato, Cumin

Sumac over labneh or thick yoghurt is standard Levantine practice. Yoghurt is already sour, so this is not acid on acid — sumac is fruity and tannic where yoghurt is lactic, and the two sournesses are distinguishable.

Add alongside: Mint, Sesame seed, Garlic

A pairing that runs from Greek and Levantine pastry through to spiced honey for cheese. Honey is floral and one-dimensionally sweet; cassia gives it a warm edge and makes it read as less cloying without reducing the sugar.

Add alongside: Cloves, Orange, Green cardamom

The Levantine answer, and a different idea from the European one. Spinach fatayer are seasoned with sumac and onion rather than with dairy: the sourness cuts the mineral edge directly instead of smoothing it over with fat.

Add alongside: Onion, Sesame seed, Black pepper

The Levantine treatment, and a corrective to thinking of allspice as a pudding spice. In mujaddara and stuffed vegetables it sits with cumin and cinnamon as a savoury warm note, which is how most of the world outside Britain uses it.

Add alongside: Cumin, Cinnamon (Ceylon), Onion

A Mediterranean pairing that runs from Provençal fish stews to Turkish and Greek cooking, and it is the same logic as fennel with fish: anethole is clean and sweet enough to lift a delicate fillet without burying it. Aniseed is the more delicate of the two and needs a lighter hand.

Add alongside: Fennel seed, Lemon, Saffron

Orange and anise recur through Mediterranean baking, poached fruit and the anise spirits themselves. Orange is sharply aromatic and aniseed is sweet without sugar, so the pair reads as richer than either alone while adding nothing to the sugar content.

Add alongside: Cassia, Fennel seed, Honey

A Mediterranean and Middle Eastern baking pair, and one where the two are genuinely complementary rather than reinforcing: cinnamon is warm and woody, aniseed is sweet and cooling, and each stops the other reading as one-dimensional.

Add alongside: Cloves, Orange, Fennel seed

A standard of Turkish and Levantine grill cooking. Lamb fat is rich and distinctly flavoured, and sumac cuts it with clean acidity at the moment of eating — applied at the table rather than during cooking, which is the part that matters. A wet acid would not survive the grill or would steam the surface.

How: Dusted over grilled lamb after cooking; Shaken over the raw onion served alongside

Add alongside: Onion, Parsley, Black pepper

• Sumac loses colour and brightness under heat, so this is a finishing pairing rather than a marinade one.
• Salted commercial sumac will season the meat as well as sour it, and the salt in the rest of the dish should be reduced accordingly.

Sumac-dressed raw onion is a fixed accompaniment in Turkish and Palestinian cooking rather than a suggestion. The acidity tempers the harshness of raw onion — the same effect a vinegar soak has — while adding no water, so the onion stays crisp instead of going limp.

How: Thinly sliced onion tossed with sumac and left briefly before serving; Musakhan, where sumac-heavy onions are the body of the dish

Add alongside: Parsley

• Left too long the onion still softens; the dryness of sumac slows this but does not prevent it.

One of the clearest cases in the dataset of a pairing that exists for a textural reason as much as a flavour one.

A Levantine and Turkish combination of an earthy base with a bright dry acid on top. They occupy entirely different parts of the palate — cumin is warm and low, sumac is sharp and high — so they layer rather than compete, which is why both appear in the same blends and on the same grilled plate.

Add alongside: Thyme, Sesame seed, Black pepper

• Cumin belongs in the cooking and sumac belongs at the end. Adding sumac early alongside the cumin wastes it.

Aubergine takes up a great deal of fat, and nigella is a spice that needs fat to open up, so the two arrive at the table having done each other a favour. The seed's slight bitterness also cuts the richness that makes fried aubergine heavy.

How: In the oil before the aubergine goes in; Scattered over a roasted aubergine with yoghurt

Add alongside: Cumin, Turmeric, Yoghurt

A traditional pairing across Turkey and the Levant, in white cheeses rolled in the seed and in cheese-filled pastries. The peppery herbal note reads against a salty fresh cheese much as cracked pepper does, and the crunch is a real part of the effect.

How: Pressed onto the outside of a fresh white cheese; In the seed mix on a cheese börek

Add alongside: Za'atar herb, Sumac

• Uncooked here, which is the exception to the usual rule — on a cheese the raw seed is doing textural work and a toasted one goes soft.

Sourness is what oily fish wants, and sumac supplies it dry — so it can be scattered on at the end without softening a crust or thinning a dressing. It is a Levantine habit that transfers well to a seared steak.

How: Scattered over seared tuna with olive oil; In a dry rub with thyme and sesame

Add alongside: Za'atar herb, Sesame seed, Onion

Sourness is the other thing courgette wants, and sumac supplies it dry — which matters here more than usual, because courgette is already releasing water and a wet acid makes the problem worse.

How: Scattered over griddled courgette with yoghurt; In a courgette and herb salad

Add alongside: Yoghurt, Mint, Garlic

Courgette is pale and bland, and turmeric addresses both at once. It appears in Indian and Persian courgette dishes, where the vegetable is a carrier rather than the point.

How: Bloomed in oil at the start of a courgette sabzi; In a mixed vegetable stew

Add alongside: Cumin, Mustard seed, Nigella

• Turmeric is easy to overdo on a mild vegetable, where its bitterness has nothing to hide behind.

Fresh white cheese and labneh with za’atar and olive oil is a Levantine breakfast, and the pairing works because the herb is dry and astringent where the cheese is soft and lactic. The oil is not optional — it carries the aromatics that the dry leaf will not release on its own.

How: Scattered over labneh with olive oil; Pressed onto a fresh white cheese

Add alongside: Sumac, Sesame seed, Garlic

The pairing the za’atar blend is built on, and the two do opposite jobs rather than reinforcing one another. The herb is savoury, dry and faintly bitter; sumac is sour and fruity. Neither carries the blend alone — the herb without sumac tastes flat and slightly dusty, sumac without the herb tastes merely sour — and the sesame that joins them supplies the fat and the body.

How: Together in a za’atar blend with toasted sesame; Both scattered over labneh, flatbread or roast vegetables

Add alongside: Sesame seed, Salt, Lemon

• The proportion matters more than the presence: sumac dominates quickly, and a blend that tastes sharp rather than herbal usually has too much of it.

The pairing the Levantine grill runs on. Lamb is fatty and strongly flavoured and can carry a spice used generously, which is exactly what Aleppo pepper is for — its moderate fruity heat seasons the meat rather than sharpening it, and the fat carries the fat-soluble capsaicin and carotenoids through.

How: In a rub for kofte and kebabs; Stirred into melted butter and poured over grilled lamb

Add alongside: Cumin, Sumac, Onion

Both are sweet, acidic and red, and the spice deepens the tomato rather than contrasting with it. Muhammara and the Turkish red pepper pastes are built on this, and it is why Aleppo pepper suits a tomato sauce where a hotter flake would simply sit on top of it.

How: In muhammara with walnut and pomegranate; Warmed in oil at the start of a tomato sauce

Add alongside: Garlic, Cumin, Mint

Eggs are rich and mild and take a visible finishing spice well. Scattered over fried or poached eggs with butter or oil, Aleppo pepper gives colour, a slow warmth and a fruitiness that ordinary chilli flakes cannot.

How: In the butter poured over Turkish poached eggs; Scattered over fried eggs with yoghurt

Add alongside: Yoghurt, Mint, Sumac

Aubergine absorbs fat and needs something with body to season it rather than something merely hot. The fruitiness reads through the richness where a sharper chilli would be lost in it.

How: In the oil before roasting; Scattered over a smoked aubergine dip

Add alongside: Garlic, Cumin, Yoghurt

Recorded for enriched dough generally, which is where mahleb lives. Tsoureki, choereg and kahk are all egg-and-butter doughs, and the pairing is structural rather than decorative: an enriched sweet dough is rich and one-dimensional, and mahleb’s bitterness gives it something to push against. A bread made without it tastes flat rather than merely less almondy.

How: Ground into an enriched Easter bread dough; In choereg and other sweet breads

Add alongside: Green cardamom, Aniseed, Orange

• Grind it fresh — the gap between freshly ground and shop-ground mahleb is unusually wide, because the oil carrying the aroma is also what goes rancid.

Levantine cheese pastries use mahleb in the dough, where its almond-and-cherry note works against a salty fresh cheese much as a nut would. It is one of the few contexts in which the spice appears in savoury baking rather than sweet.

How: In the dough for cheese-filled pastries; In savoury breads with sesame

Add alongside: Sesame seed, Nigella, Black pepper

Recorded because the relationship is the whole logic of the spice. Mahleb is bitter and is used almost exclusively in sweet doughs and fillings — maamoul and kahk are very sweet, and the bitterness is what stops them cloying. Sugar and mahleb are not a flavour affinity so much as a balance the tradition depends on.

How: In maamoul and kahk fillings; In sweet enriched breads with a sugar glaze

Add alongside: Orange, Green cardamom, Sesame seed

Lentils are earthy and almost sweet and have very little aromatic character of their own, so they take a savoury base readily. Fried onion is the standard one from France to Bengal — in a dal it is often the finishing tarka as well as the base, and browned onion over rice and lentils is a dish in itself in Egypt and the Levant.

How: Browned and stirred through cooked lentils as a finish; Crisp-fried as a garnish over rice and lentils

Add alongside: Cumin, Asafoetida, Turmeric

Dairy is where mastic belongs, and the reason is textural as much as aromatic. Ground into a hot milk mixture the resin dissolves and contributes body and a distinctive elasticity — the chew in Greek kaymak ice cream and Turkish dondurma — while the pine and cedar notes sit against the fat without being absorbed by it the way a delicate aromatic would be.

How: Ground and whisked into a hot milk base for ice cream; In milk puddings such as muhallebi

Add alongside: Mahleb, Green cardamom, Honey

• Add the powder gradually while whisking. Dropped into hot milk at once it clumps into strands that will not disperse.

Not a flavour pairing but a working one, and it appears twice. Mastic is sticky at room temperature and will gum up a mill, so it is pounded with a pinch of sugar which keeps the powder separate — the standard technique across Greek and Levantine kitchens. And in loukoumi and lokum the sugar syrup is the medium the resin sets into, where its elasticity is the defining texture of the sweet.

How: Pounded with a pinch of sugar to grind it; Dissolved into the syrup for loukoumi and lokum

Add alongside: Lemon, Green cardamom

• Take the sugar used for grinding from the recipe rather than adding it, or a delicate dessert ends up sweeter than intended.

Citrus is the standing partner for mastic across the Aegean and the Levant, and orange blossom in particular appears with it in the same breads and puddings. The pairing works because both are aromatic without being sweet: the resin supplies pine and a cooling edge, the citrus supplies brightness, and neither is competing for the sweetness the sugar is already providing.

How: With orange blossom water in milk puddings and spoon sweets; Zest and ground mastic together in an enriched bread

Add alongside: Mahleb, Sugar, Green cardamom