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

Lamb’s characteristic smell comes from branched-chain fatty acids in its fat, which suits assertive resinous seasoning rather than delicate aromatics. Greek cooking makes this near-canonical: rigani, lemon and olive oil over grilled lamb, with the oregano crumbled on at the end so the phenols arrive undiminished.

How: Crumbled over grilled lamb with lemon and oil; In a dry rub before roasting

Add alongside: Lemon, Garlic, Black pepper

• Easy to overdo on a lean cut, where the bitterness has no fat to sit against.

Aubergine is bland, absorbent and takes up an enormous amount of oil, which makes it a perfect carrier for a fat-soluble herb. Oregano goes into the oil rather than onto the vegetable, and southern Italian and Greek cooking use the combination constantly.

How: In the oil before the aubergine goes in; In a tomato sauce for melanzane or briam

Add alongside: Tomato, Garlic

Cabbage is sulfurous and sweet in equal measure and gets more so with cooking. Savory’s peppery sharpness cuts the sweetness and gives the sulfur something to sit behind, which is why it appears in Balkan and central European cabbage dishes and in pickling brines.

How: In a braised cabbage dish; In a pickling brine with the cucumbers or cabbage

Add alongside: Caraway, Black pepper, Juniper

A pairing two entirely separate traditions arrived at: British mint sauce with roast lamb, and the mint that goes through kofte, kebab and lamb dishes across Türkiye, the Levant and Iran. The mechanism is the same in both — lamb fat is heavy and distinctive, and mint’s cooling quality reads as relief rather than as competition.

How: Chopped fresh with vinegar and sugar as a sauce; Dried mint rubbed into a kofte mixture

Add alongside: Cumin, Sumac, Black pepper

• Dried and fresh mint are used for different dishes here. Dried belongs in the kofte; fresh belongs in the sauce.

Cacık, tzatziki, raita and dozens of relatives across the eastern Mediterranean and South Asia. Yoghurt is sour, cold and fatty, and mint’s cooling menthol-adjacent quality compounds rather than contradicts it — one of the few pairings that works by agreement rather than by contrast.

How: Dried mint stirred through with garlic and cucumber; Fresh mint chopped into raita

Add alongside: Cumin, Garlic, Black salt

Chickpeas are dense, starchy and faintly nutty with no aromatic profile to speak of, which leaves a herb free rein. Mint appears with them across the Levant and Iran, in salads, in stews and scattered over hummus, and it lifts a heavy ingredient in a way parsley does more quietly.

How: Fresh mint in a chickpea salad with lemon; Dried mint through a chickpea and lentil soup

Add alongside: Cumin, Sumac, Lemon

Earthy against cooling, and used together across Türkiye, the Levant, Iran and South Asia in kofte, yoghurt sauces, chutneys and lentil dishes. Cumin fills the low end and mint the high, and neither obscures the other.

How: Together in a kofte or kebab mixture; In a mint chutney with green chilli

Add alongside: Coriander seed, Garlic, Chilli flakes

Moroccan mint tea is green tea rather than black, and mint is drunk with black tea across Türkiye, Iran and the Levant as well. Tannin is astringent and drying; mint is cooling and sweet, and the sugar that usually accompanies both is doing structural work rather than merely sweetening.

How: A large bunch of spearmint steeped with tea and sugar; A sprig dropped into a glass

Add alongside: Green cardamom, Sugar

• Spearmint, not peppermint. The menthol in peppermint makes a much harsher drink.

Eggs are rich, sulfurous and mild, and they take a fresh green herb better than almost any other ingredient. Dill appears with them across Iran in kuku, in eastern European omelettes and in Greek pies, and its coolness sits against the fat without the peppery edge of parsley.

How: In a kuku or a herb omelette; Through scrambled eggs off the heat

Add alongside: Cheese, Black pepper, Turmeric

Falafel is chickpeas and herbs, and across the Levant parsley is used with pulses in quantities that make it an ingredient rather than a seasoning. It works because chickpeas are heavy and quiet and parsley is light and quiet: it lifts without asserting, which a stronger herb could not do at that volume.

How: Blended raw into a falafel mixture; Through a chickpea salad with lemon and onion

Add alongside: Cumin, Coriander seed, Lemon

The Levantine finishing pair: sumac supplies a fruity acidity without liquid, parsley supplies green freshness, and both go on at the end of a dish rather than into it. Fattoush and a dozen salads are built on the combination.

How: Over a fattoush or a tomato and onion salad; Scattered on grilled meat with onion

Add alongside: Mint, Lemon, Za'atar herb

Rose through yoghurt and milk puddings runs from Iran through the Levant to South Asia — muhallebi, firni, doogh, lassi. Dairy fat carries the rose alcohols and the sourness stops the perfume becoming cloying, which is the same relationship that makes rose work with cream and not with water.

How: Petals infused into warm milk and strained; Ground rose stirred through a yoghurt drink

Add alongside: Green cardamom, Saffron, Sugar

Salt raises the perceived intensity of aroma as well as of taste, and dried mint has a lot of aroma and almost no taste — which is why the two are combined directly in chaat masala, in Turkish table mixtures and in the salt-and-mint rubs used on kofte. It is also why unsalted mint yoghurt tastes of nothing much.

How: Ground together in a chaat masala; Rubbed into a kofte mixture with the salt

Add alongside: Cumin, Black salt, Sumac

Halloumi arrives salty and fatty and needs acid and aromatic lift rather than more savouriness. Za’atar supplies both — the herb’s resin and the sumac’s fruity acidity — and it is applied after grilling, because the surface is hot and dry enough to scorch a leaf.

How: Scattered over grilled halloumi with oil; With lemon and flatbread

Add alongside: Sumac, Mint, Lemon

• On after cooking. Za’atar on the pan is burnt sesame.

A Cypriot pairing of long standing — halloumi is traditionally made with dried mint pressed into the fold — and it works for the same reason mint works with yoghurt: a cooling green note against salt and fat.

How: Dried mint in the cheese itself, in the Cypriot tradition; Fresh mint scattered over after grilling with lemon

Add alongside: Sumac, Lemon

Sumac supplies acidity without liquid, which matters here: a squeeze of lemon on hot halloumi makes the surface soggy, and sumac does the same job dry. It is the reason the pairing appears across the Levant wherever the cheese is grilled rather than fried.

How: Scattered over hot halloumi straight off the grill

Add alongside: Za'atar herb, Mint, Black pepper

Fat and salt both blunt capsaicin, so halloumi takes more heat than its delicacy suggests. Aleppo pepper and Turkish pul biber are the traditional choices and are milder and fruitier than generic flakes, which suits a cheese that is already assertive.

How: With honey and chilli over grilled halloumi; In an oil poured over after cooking

Add alongside: Mint, Sumac, Honey

The Turkish and Levantine route. Cumin and dried mint through a lamb or beef mince is the identifying seasoning of köfte, and cumin does the same job here that it does in a lamb rub — its earthiness meets the branched-chain fatty acids in the fat rather than covering them.

How: Worked through a köfte mixture with dried mint; With onion and parsley in a lamb mince

Add alongside: Mint, Black pepper, Sumac

Scattered on naan, on Turkish pide and simit, on Levantine flatbreads and on bagels across the region. Nigella is used on the surface rather than in the dough, and it works there because the seed is hard and oily enough to toast rather than scorch at bread temperatures.

How: Scattered on the surface before baking; On naan straight out of the tandoor

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

Manakish is flatbread dough spread with za’atar and oil and baked, and it is among the most widely eaten breakfasts in the Levant. The oil is not optional: it protects the herb and the sesame from the oven and carries the aromatics into the surface of the dough.

How: Mixed with oil and spread over flatbread dough before baking

Add alongside: Sumac, Sesame seed, Salt

• Dry za’atar on a hot surface burns. The oil is doing structural work.

The Turkish technique of melting butter, stirring in urfa and pouring the lot over a yoghurt dish is the spice at its best. Fat carries the raisin and chocolate notes that dry flakes keep to themselves, the yoghurt’s acidity cuts the sweetness, and its coolness meets a heat that arrives late and stays low.

How: Bloomed in melted butter and poured over yoghurt or manti; Scattered over a yoghurt dip with olive oil

Add alongside: Mint, Garlic, Sumac

• Low heat. The sugars in urfa burn well before the butter does.

The pairing southeastern Türkiye is built on. Lamb fat is heavy and distinctive and urfa is sweet, dark and only moderately hot, so it deepens the meat rather than competing with it — which is why it is used by the tablespoon on a kebab where crushed red pepper would be used by the pinch.

How: Worked through a kofte or kebab mixture; Scattered over grilled lamb with sumac and onion

Add alongside: Cumin, Sumac, Mint

• The flakes carry salt. Season the mixture after adding them, not before.

Turkish lentil soup finished with a spiced butter is one of the most common uses of urfa in its home region. Lentils are earthy and aromatically quiet, urfa is dark and sweet, and the butter carries it — the same three-part logic as the yoghurt pairing, applied to a different base.

How: In the butter poured over mercimek çorbası; Stirred through a lentil salad with lemon

Add alongside: Mint, Cumin, Lemon

Two cooling herbs that cool differently — dill through a soft anise sweetness, mint through menthol, which acts on the trigeminal nerve rather than on taste. Because the mechanisms differ the effect stacks rather than duplicating, which is why the pair is standard in yoghurt preparations from Georgia through Turkey to the Levant.

How: Stirred into yoghurt with garlic; Both dried, in khmeli suneli

Add alongside: Garlic, Parsley

Paprika is sweet and dominant by volume; nigella is bitter and dominant by character, so a very little of it changes the whole reading of a red mixture. Berbere and several Levantine and Turkish red blends use the same relationship.

How: In berbere

Add alongside: Korarima

• Nigella is easy to overdo; past a small proportion the mixture turns harsh

Oily fish and acid is the most reliable pairing in seafood cookery, and sumac is the Levantine way of getting acid onto something without adding liquid. Mackerel's oil oxidises fast and produces the flavours people call fishy; the sourness reads directly against them.

How: Dusted over grilled mackerel; With onion and parsley in a Turkish fish salad

The sour cherry's savoury partner, and one that spans Persia, Turkey and the Balkans. Cassia with sour cherry and lamb is a combination that reads strange in English-speaking cooking and is entirely ordinary from Isfahan to Sarajevo.

How: In albaloo polow; With lamb