Meat Telling Stories of the Ottoman Empire

Series: What can foods tell u about? - about history In my 3rd semester in Romania, Meaty dishes led me on a Flavorful Journey Through Romanian Cuisine, History, and Hidden Legacies

A culinary art inherited from the medieval empires

I’m more in love with Romanian food than anything else — more than Italy’s pasta and tomato-sauce-drenched pizzas, or France’s 1001 types of cheese paired with wine, each bursting with distinct regional flair. The flavors here are diverse, rich, and deeply rooted in a culinary tradition shaped over tens of thousands of years. It’s a beautiful blend — a careful selection and adaptation of the gastronomic gems from the most powerful medieval empires of Europe (Turkey, Austria-Hungary, Greece, Russia, France, Italy), layered over local Orthodox religious practices and even foreign religions like Islam and Catholicism.

Meats

Romanians love their meat, especially pork. Like the dish “Sarmale” (pickled cabbage rolls stuffed with meat) that my homeroom teacher once made for us (photo). Or those kebab rolls I often grabbed on the go when I was late to class 😊)).

“you need to learn how to make a good Sarmale to find a wife husband in Romania” My prof said :))) Sarmale - the national food of Romania

Turk infuences

These meaty dishes were born under the influence of the Turks — the Ottoman Empire, a Muslim empire that spanned from the 14th century until after World War I. The Romanian people rose up many times against the Ottomans’ tax-based rule but never succeeded.

The old map of Romania was divided into 3 states and one of them shares the border with the Ottoman Empire The territory nowadays includes some extra parts, making it looks like a 🐠

The old map of Romania

Vlad - the Dracular!

The most iconic figure of resistance was none other than Vlad Țepeș the Impaler — the Dracula of legend. Vlad led troops into Ottoman lands and impaled tens of thousands of people in the most brutal way possible (impaling was Vlad’s signature execution method, where a stake was driven from the mouth down through the anus). Unsurprisingly, Vlad’s army was no match for the Ottomans — one of the most influential empires in history. It’s said that even while imprisoned, just before the Sultan ordered his execution, Vlad was still impaling rats in his cell 😖.

Vlad Dracula and his “impale”

Surprise

What surprised me was that, despite centuries of Ottoman rule, I didn’t come across a single mosque in Romania. Turns out, to preserve some autonomy and avoid religious imposition, Romania paid massive tribute taxes to the Ottomans. As a result, even though the country is rich in natural resources like gold, salt, and fertile land, its capital city couldn’t develop properly. A lot of my classmates weren’t even interested in visiting Bucharest… “because it’s ugly” :))) That “ugliness” is, of course, the product of many other factors — like a series of fires back when buildings were mostly made of wood, a devastating earthquake in 1977, and more recently, the wave of Communism that swept through after World War II (note: Romania was never part of the Soviet Union; it was just a Communist country, like Poland, Hungary, or Yugoslavia at the time).

Bucharest-the capital of Romania

This is getting long so I’ll stop here for now — hopefully I’ll be disciplined enough to write the next part 😆