Turkish ice cream vendors
This week I am curious about the Turkish ice cream vendors. Every once in a while, I come across videos of Turkish ice cream vendors playing tricks on customers. These vendors usually have the same type of setup, the same types of clothes and almost the same types of tricks. That got me thinking about origins of Turkish ice creams and why these ice cream vendors play tricks?
What’s a Turkish ice cream and what’s so unique about it?
A Turkish ice cream is commonly called Dondurma, which literally means frozen in Turkish1. It typically includes ingredients such as cream, goat milk, salep (a flour made from tubers), mastic (plant resin) and sugar2. It said to have originated in the city of Maras, the Turkish capital of ice creams where the residents traditionally made ice creams using ice from the surrounding snow capped mountains.
There are numerous stories regarding the origins of Dondurma, and one story traces back to an Ottoman man called Osman, who used to sell Sahleb, a hot beverage made from tubers and goat milk to Ottoman mansions. One day a large quantity remained unsold and he decided to bury it in the snow to keep it from going sour. When he retrieved it the next day, it had turned into ice cream and hence Maras ice cream was born3.
Turkish ice creams are distinguished by their hard texture and resistance to melting, caused by the inclusion of salep and mastic. The stretchiness of the ice cream also comes from Dondurma vendors, who beat the ice cream with long metal rods and knead it like dough4. As the salep supplies are dwindling today, the Government has put a ban on its export and vendors abroad often substitute guar gum or konjac for the similar stretchy effect.
The Dondurma vendor
A typical Dondurma vendor will wear traditional clothing from Ottoman Empire, which entails a rob and a hat of the same color, mostly likely maroon with gold embroidery. The robs is known as “Kaftan”, and is made from lightweight, breathable fabric to keep vendors cool during the hot summer months. The hat is called “Fez” and that has become a symbol of the Turkish ice cream culture5.
The Dondurma is mostly served in a cone and hence a typical vendor cart or shop has a lot of cones and a long metal spoons, which is used to beat the ice cream and serve it on a cone. There are several containers for different ice cream flavors and the carts have hanging bells to attract attention as well.
Why do the vendors play tricks and why are they so popular?
Since the ice cream is sticky and does not melt easily, it allows Dondurma vendors to play tricks and prank customers. I could not find any traditional significance behind these pranks, except the fact that it is a salesmanship technique used to attract attention.
Customers laughing and having fun just attracts other customers and that just means more business for the vendors. Also, social media has made these pranks popular and has made more people aware of these ice cream vendors.
The nuances behind these theatrics are mostly similar, where the vendor challenges the customer to grab the ice-cream and uses peculiar qualities of Dondurma to play the tricks. Drawing parallels to standup comedy, the punchline is delivered by the element of surprise where you expect something and something else happens, and that induces laughter to both the customers and the spectators.
You expect to hold the cone, and the vendor pulls the ice cream away. You expect a small scoop, the vendor hands over a big chunk. You expect to take a bite, vendor sticks the ice cream to your nose. Lastly, the vendor always gives an extra ice-cream to compensate for the customer’s frustration and everybody goes home happily.
So this week, I was curious about the Turkish ice cream vendors. Do subscribe to my blog to read about different things that I am curious about every week. My name is Kushal and I am a part-time Product Manager and a full-time hustler. I work as a Senior Product Manager at SoFi and I also do writing, quizzing, podcasting and standup comedy for fun.