Salep

Orchid tuber flour and hot milk with cinnamon — the Ottoman winter drink that predated coffee's rise, also making Turkish dondurma ice cream unusually elastic.

Salep is a warm, thick beverage prepared from flour ground from the dried tubers of specific wild orchid species — primarily Orchis mascula, Dactylorhiza maculata, and related species in the family Orchidaceae — whose starchy, mucilaginous quality produces a uniquely smooth, slightly viscous drink when mixed with hot milk and sweetened with sugar and cinnamon. The Ottoman Empire developed and commercialized salep as a winter street food and café beverage from at least the 16th century, and Istanbul's winter streets were historically characterized by the calls of salep vendors (salepcis) who carried heated copper vessels and served the warming drink to pedestrians. Salep became the dominant winter hot drink of the Ottoman world before coffee achieved its later cultural dominance in the same region. In Britain, salep was consumed during the 17th and early 18th centuries before tea and coffee displaced it, and coffee houses in 18th-century London commonly served it alongside their primary offerings. Salep flour is also the defining ingredient of Turkish dondurma — the unusually elastic, stretchy ice cream made by incorporating salep's polysaccharides into the frozen dairy — giving the ice cream its famous resistance to melting and its characteristic chewy texture. Conservation concerns are acute: harvesting wild orchid tubers destroys the plants permanently, and the population pressure from salep demand has caused significant decline in wild orchid populations across Turkey and the Middle East, leading to both export restrictions and the development of substitute starches in commercial salep products.