güllaç — Turkey

Güllaç is a milk-based dessert built from very thin sheets of pastry that are softened in warm, sweetened milk rather than baked, then layered with walnuts and chilled until set. It is eaten mainly during Ramadan, when its light, cool character suits meals eaten after a day of fasting. The dessert is reported across Turkey during that period, sold ready-made in pastry shops as well as prepared at home, where families often make it only once a year. Its pastry sheets, sold specifically for this dish, are stocked in shops mainly around the same season, which ties the dessert closely to the calendar rather than to any single region. Milk is warmed with sugar until it dissolves, then scented with rose water. Each pastry sheet is dipped briefly in the warm milk to soften it before being laid flat in a dish, with chopped walnuts scattered between the layers as they build up. The rest of the milk is poured evenly over the top so every sheet is soaked through, and the dish is chilled for several hours until the milk has been absorbed and the layers hold together. Pomegranate seeds and chopped pistachios are added just before serving. Some cooks and food writers treat güllaç as an ancestor of layered pastries such as baklava, pointing to the shared use of thin sheets and nuts, though the two desserts differ in that one is soaked cold in milk while the other is baked and syrup-soaked. The pastry itself has also changed over time: sheets once made only from wheat starch are now more often a mix of corn starch and wheat flour, a shift in ingredients rather than in the dish's basic structure.