From Ottoman Empire to Republic: Bursa's Kebab and Candy Legacy

A Shop in Kayhan Bazaar

In 1867, inside a small shop in Bursa's Kayhan Bazaar, meat started roasting vertically instead of horizontally. According to the founding family's own account, it was İskender Efendi — the son of restaurant owner Mehmet Efendi — who proposed the change. He trimmed the bone and sinew from lamb, stacked it on a spit, and served the roasted meat in thin slices over pieces of pita bread, topped with hot tomato sauce and melted butter.

Yogurt still accompanies the dish today, and that trio — pita, tomato sauce, butter — remains the formula recognized internationally as İskender kebab. The dish was briefly called 'rotating kebab,' but the name that stuck was the cook's own. The business still operates in Bursa today, run by the İskenderoğlu family.

When a Recipe Becomes a Trademark

The name İskender is not just a recipe — it is a documented legal dispute. In 2010, Turkey's Court of Cassation (11th Civil Chamber, case 2008/7209, decision 2010/3394) ruled in a dispute among İskender Efendi's heirs, cancelling four trademark registrations — including 'Aleksander's Kebap' — filed by one family member, on the grounds that rights to the name belonged jointly to the family.

A year later, a separate case reached the same court over 'Meşhur İskender' ('Famous İskender'), a mark registered by a business outside the family (case 2009/14859, decision 2011/7548). The court rejected the argument that 'İskender' had become a generic dish name, noting no final ruling had ever established that, and cancelled the competing registration instead — treating İskender as a protected, well-known trademark.

The Rise of the Vertical Spit

İskender kebab is part of a larger shift: cooking meat on a vertical spit, the technique now known worldwide as döner. Sources place the vertical spit in Ottoman lands by at least the mid-19th century.

Who did it first is genuinely unclear. One account, from a grandson of the İskenderoğlu family, credits young İskender Efendi with the idea in 1850s Bursa. Other sources point to Hamdi Usta, from Kastamonu, possibly using the method around 1830. Claims of 'inventing' the döner are notoriously hard to verify — but Bursa is still widely regarded as the birthplace of the vertically roasted version.

Uludağ's Chestnuts and the Art of Candying

Bursa's second great legacy belongs to the confectioner's counter: kestane şekeri, candied chestnuts grown on the slopes of Mount Uludağ. Peeled chestnuts are simmered in sugar syrup until candied; production in Bursa began in the city's once-famous Şekerciler Çarşısı (Confectioners' Bazaar) in the early 1900s.

The closest international relative is France's marron glacé, built on the same basic idea. That technique is thought to have emerged in Italy's Cuneo region in the 16th century, with the earliest written recipe published by French court chef François Pierre La Varenne in 1667. Bursa's tradition developed on its own terms — there is no evidence of a direct historical transfer between the two.

The labor is real: chestnuts are peeled by hand or machine, steamed to loosen their inner skins, sorted by size, then simmered in syrup for 45 minutes to an hour. A practice dating to the 1930s still survives — tying two or three candied chestnuts into a mesh cloth bundle before sale. Turkey's official registration requires a minimum fruit content of 63 to 71 percent, keeping the product a real chestnut confection rather than a sugar shell.

Protected Names: Bursa's Geographical Indications

At least three Bursa specialties carry official protection from the Turkish Patent and Trademark Office. Bursa Kestane Şekeri holds registration No. 652 as a mahreç işareti (a geographical indication tied to reputation and method), filed by the Bursa Chamber of Commerce and Industry in 2019 and registered on 20 January 2021 — requiring at least 63–71% fruit content and production entirely within Bursa province.

İnegöl köfte holds registration No. 78, registered in 2005 by the İnegöl Chamber of Commerce and Industry. Unlike the chestnut candy, its protected geographic zone is defined as all of Turkey — meaning any producer nationwide can use the name, as long as they follow the registered recipe: beef and lamb only, no additives beyond bread crumb, salt, onion, and sodium bicarbonate, cooked until the center reaches 70–72°C.

A third registration is easy to misread from its name alone: Bursa Cevizli Lokum (No. 942, registered 2021) is not a jellied candy despite the word 'lokum' — it is a stone-oven baked pastry filled with walnuts, tied to Ottoman-era wedding and circumcision-feast traditions.