No, Ottoman cuisine did not influence Moroccan cuisine

(… and I some­times regret it)

I have read in sev­er­al books that the mul­ti­ple influ­ences of Moroccan cui­sine include Turkish cuisine.

This has always sur­prised me. You don't find in Morocco the great clas­sics of this impe­r­i­al cui­sine, itself a fusion of many influ­ences (includ­ing Persian cuisine).

Moroccan cui­sine is very spe­cif­ic. It shares dish­es such as cous­cous with the rest of the Maghreb, but Moroccan flavours, spice blends and their sub­tle­ty, for exam­ple, are unique.

Little foreign influence in Moroccan cuisine

In fact, the oppo­site is true: culi­nar­i­ly, there is a sort of bor­der to the east of Morocco, which cor­re­sponds to the his­tor­i­cal fron­tiers, and which stops the spread of many dish­es that are wide­spread in the rest of the Maghreb and North Africa (such as falafel, for exam­ple). Even "tajine" is dif­fer­ent in Tunisia.

This had even been a dif­fi­cul­ty when my hus­band and I had fixed the pro­gramme "Fourchette et sac à dos" about Morocco. Shot in the south of Morocco, at the time of the Rose Festival in Kelaa M'Gouna, it was impos­si­ble to find rose-based dish­es in Moroccan cui­sine.

No louk­oums, no mix­tures of spices like the advieh(which I end­ed up mak­ing myself), rose water, in our coun­try, is a per­fume, noth­ing more, that can be used in desserts, where­as the rose is omnipresent in this "Iranian-Persian-Ottoman" cuisine. 

(For the record, we end­ed up "invent­ing" a recipe for beef tajine with rose water at the request of the pro­duc­tion team, which I have since seen repeat­ed on a few web­sites as a clas­sic of Moroccan cui­sine. It is not, and I assure you that this dish is not good.… sor­ry Julie!)

Except in border regions or pre-colonial immigration regions

So I jumped for joy when I read this inter­view with Anny Gaul, an American his­to­ri­an, who lim­its the influ­ence of Turkish cui­sine to the city of Tetouan.

The his­to­ry of cui­sine is fas­ci­nat­ing. It is the his­to­ry of the econ­o­my, of reli­gion, with its culi­nary taboos, of trade and exchange, of climate…

The his­to­ry of Moroccan cui­sine is a bit dif­fi­cult. In Europe, we have sources for medieval — and even ancient — cui­sine. In Morocco, such ancient sources hard­ly exist. On the oth­er hand, if you look at the ingre­di­ents of tra­di­tion­al Moroccan dish­es, you can see that a cer­tain num­ber of them, such as toma­toes, are import­ed prod­ucts, which could not have arrived in the coun­try before the 16th or 17th cen­tu­ry, or devel­oped before the 20th century.

This is the sub­ject of one of Anny Gaul's blog posts: what was pas­ta like in the 17th cen­tu­ry?

To come back to Turkish influ­ences on Moroccan cui­sine, we must, of course, dis­re­gard the suc­cess of shawar­mas ,the local name giv­en to kebab — which is, in fact, of German ori­gin, an inven­tion by a Turkish immi­grant (after all) that con­quered the world. The clos­est thing to it in Turkish cui­sine is the iskan­der don­er, which is served on a plate.

Tetouan, in the east of Morocco, nev­er belonged to the Ottoman Empire.  On the oth­er hand, it wel­comed many Algerian refugees in the 19th cen­tu­ry, who were flee­ing French coloni­sa­tion. They brought Ottoman recipes, cakes such as balka­va, k'taifs, kaâb m'fenned, m'hancha and zam­mi­ta… (as con­firmed by Fatima R'houni, a spe­cial­ist in the cui­sine of Tetouan)

Main differences between Turkish and Moroccan cuisine

Living in Germany for a few years, I ate real Turkish food in local restau­rants run by Turks whose clien­tele was most­ly Turkish, and I bought a few cookbooks.

Rice, ravi­o­li, dairy prod­ucts (the famous taztzi­ki) are absent from tra­di­tion­al Moroccan cui­sine. Even the Turkish ver­sion of aubergine sal­ad is eat­en with yoghurt! Turkey also has many cheeses, and I still miss the hal­lou­mi I used to find at Bim!

Tabbouleh, of which the Turks have cre­at­ed a their own vari­ant, does not exist at all in Morocco.

In spices and condi­ments, Turkey uses sumac, salep, pop­py seeds, sesame in the form of tahi­na. Sesame and nut oils are also used a lot, where­as they remain rare and lux­u­ry prod­ucts in Morocco.

Spinach is one of the basic veg­eta­bles. In Morocco, bakkoula (mal­low) is used dur­ing a lim­it­ed season…

Finally, Turkish breads are whiter and more leav­ened than tra­di­tion­al Moroccan breads.

Two very different culinary spheres

Turkey is there­fore in the world of "Levant (sun­rise)" cui­sine (Lebanon, Syria, Iran, Afghanistan) with which it shares ingre­di­ents and prepa­ra­tion meth­ods. The Turkish Sultan has his main res­i­dence in Istanbul (Topkapi and then Dolmabahçe), a unique cap­i­tal. Between the Mediterranean and the Black Sea, Turkey is lit­er­al­ly in the mid­dle of waters. It has a Mediterranean cli­mate with some cool­er moun­tain areas.

Morocco is in the "Sunset". Most of the ingre­di­ents of Turkish cui­sine can be found here, many are rar­er, the dish­es, the prepa­ra­tions are dif­fer­ent. For cen­turies, the Moroccan sul­tan moves from palace to palace, the impe­r­i­al cities change with the dynas­ties. Moroccan cui­sine is very much influ­enced by desert cui­sine, by this almost nomadic way of life.

In short, it's not the same…