Turkish baklava is an Ottoman invention. It consists of a tight stack of paper-thin filo dough, layered with chopped nuts and bound with honey or syrup. The earliest English reference to it comes from 1650, but the word may have Mongolian origins (bayla means “to pile up,” as in layers of filo). The creation of the dish is unknown, with some scholars suggesting it is a natural extension of the ancient central Asian Turkic tradition of baking layered breads, while others point to the distressingly-named ancient Roman placenta cake (which was much tastier and less alarming than it sounds, featuring layers of dough alternating with cheese, honey and ground bay leaves). The origin story is perhaps of less importance than what the dish became. Baklava as we know it today featured in a Renaissance ceremony held at the Topkapi Palace in Istanbul. On the 15th of every month during Ramadan, the sultan would present baklava to his Janissaries, the elite troops of the Ottoman army, in a ritual called Baklava Alayi.
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