The story of the creation of Turkish Delight (Lokum) begins in the late 1700s, when Ali Muhiddin Hacı Bekir, confectioner to the imperial court in Istanbul, listens to he sultan rant: “Hard candy! I’m tired of hard candy! I demand soft candy “as he cracked a tooth on yet another sourball!

Marching into his confectioner’s kitchen, he thought up a recipe, mixing water, sugar, corn starch, cream of tartar and rosewater; cooked it up, poured the mixture into a flat pan slicked with almond oil, and let it cool. Then he sprinkled it with powdered sugar, cut it into bite-sized chunks and after serving the morsel; started waiting with   trembling hands, eyes bright with anticipation, his mind fraught with trepidation, his lips quivering to receive the verdict, and then the Sultan bit!
Finding out that there was no crack of candy crunched by his Majesty’s jaw; no shower of sugary splinters scattering through oral cavities, he was delighted to hear the Sultan declare that this new confection was “soft and easy to chew, a pleasure, a treat for both palate and teeth, merely “comfortable morsel!”