Chewy Candy Class

Grant Crilly is the Executive Director and cofounder of ChefSteps. Grant is a classically trained chef and, prior to ChefSteps, he worked on the award-winning cookbook series Modernist Cuisine and cooked at various restaurants, including L’Astrance in Paris, Busaba in Mumbai, and Mistral Kitchen in Seattle.

Grant Crilly

Children the world over associate Turkish delight with a magic wardrobe and a hidden world—it’s the treat that the White Witch uses to enchant children in Narnia in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe—but it’s possible the gummy, powdered sugar–covered cube had medicinal origins. Known in Turkish as rahat lokum, which is derived from the Arabic for “throat’s ease,” the rosewater-flavored sweet may have been invented by Arab apothecaries as the ninth-century equivalent of a cough drop. 
 
Fast forward to the present day. This chocolate version was first developed by ChefSteps cofounder Chris Young at Heston Blumenthal’s Fat Duck Experimental Kitchen in 2007. Turkish delight gets its characteristic gelled, gummy texture from the reaction of pectin with acidic flavorings such as lemon juice. A combination of LM pectin and a modified starch creates the perfect chocolate Turkish delight. Blumenthal never served this recipe, but we felt it would be a shame to let the technique go to waste, and we’ve adapted the recipe to work with a more readily available starch. The result is a chocolate-flavored sweet that would lure anyone to Narnia, no questions asked.

Chocolate Turkish Delight