08/29/2025
I love the history of baklawa. Obviously I'm partial to the Arabs 😝
Who Owns Baklava?
Would you believe one of the world’s sweetest desserts is also one of its biggest culinary battlegrounds?
Baklava, those delicate layers of filo pastry drenched in honey and packed with nuts, has sparked fierce debate across the Eastern Mediterranean. Is it Turkish? Greek? Middle Eastern? The truth is as layered as the dessert itself.
Historians trace early versions back to the kitchens of the Ottoman Empire, where palace chefs perfected the art of stretching paper-thin dough and sweetening it with honey and pistachios.
But if you go further back, you’ll find references resembling baklava in Byzantine and even ancient Roman cooking, where layered pastries were flavored with nuts and honey. Armenians, Persians, Arabs, and Greeks all had their own variations, each shaping what we now know as baklava.
The reason it is so hotly contested is because baklava is more than just a dessert—it’s a cultural identity. Food often becomes the flag of a culture, and in regions where history has been marked by conquest, shifting borders, and empires rising and falling, a dish can become a claim to heritage.
For Greece, baklava represents centuries of tradition tied to Orthodox feast days and independence. For Turkey, it is a jewel of Ottoman cuisine, so central that Gaziantep’s pistachio baklava holds a protected EU designation. Across the Middle East, it remains a proud marker of sweet Arab hospitality.
So who really owns baklava? In my opinion, it's a shared legacy of empire, migration, and the kitchens of ordinary people whose hands folded pastry long before politicians drew modern borders.
👉 What do you think? If you had to cast your vote, is baklava Turkish, Greek, Middle Eastern, or simply belonging to everyone?
Find more historical recipes at eatshistory.com
