Thomas de Courcy (https://www.bakerspeel.com) asked a question about documentation for pastirma before 1600. Of course, that sent me down today’s research rabbit hole.
Wikipedia had some interesting links that focused on etymology but no actual recipes. According to Wikipedia, “the word pastırma comes from the Turkish verb bastırmak which means “to press”. The Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink writes that pastırma is the word Ottomans used for a type of Byzantine cured beef that was called paston. The Oxford Companion for Food says that a Byzantine dried meat delicacy was “a forerunner of the pastirma of modern Turkey”. According to Johannes Koder, an expert in Byzantine studies, paston could mean either salted meat or salted fish.
Other scholars have given different accounts of the historical origins of the Ottoman pastırma. The armies of settled, agricultural peoples had cereal based diet, and some Turkish and Bulgarian scholars have written that certain medieval fighters who kept dried and salted meat under their saddles had an edge over opponents who ate mostly cereals. Ammianus Marcellinus wrote that the Huns warmed this meat by placing it between their legs or on the backs of their horses. Pastırma is mentioned in 11th C scholar Mahmud of Kashgar‘s Diwan Lughat al-Turk and 17th C explorer Evliya Çelebi‘s Seyahatname.”
Wikipedia also notes that “the word pastrami may be a Yiddish construction that combined salami with pastırma or one of the similar linguistic variations of the word (pastram in Romanian, pastromá in Russian and basturma in Armenian).”
Henry Marks, in Byzantine Cuisine, wrote about apoctia, which is pieces of meat prepared by removing them from the bone, covering them with salt and placing them in the sun. His source was a Greek author (Koukoule), who said that the original information comes from Geoponika. Unfortunately, my edition of Geoponika does not seem to include that information.
Andrew Dalby, in Flavours of Byzantium (p. 71) says that apokti, dried cured meat, is mentioned in the Book of Ceremonies of Constantine Porphyrogennetos. The modern recipe from the same book (p. 171) is a traditional one from Santorini. It uses pork loin that is trimmed, salted for a day, then steeped in vinegar for three days. Then it is removed from the vinegar, patted dry and rubbed with cinnamon and left for five or six hours. Then it is rubbed with ground black pepper, dried savory, and more cinnamon and hung to dry for several weeks.
In a different document (From Greeks Abroad: social organization and food among the ten thousand, 1992) Dalby notes in his Footnote 97 – “Turkish and Bulgarian scholars consider that the fact that their warlike medieval ancestors had a regular supply of meat, dried and salted under their saddles, contributed to their success against opponents who fought on cereal food. The method (said to be precursor of modern Turkish pastirma) is first recorded of the Huns by Ammianus Marcellinus 31.2.3, quam inter femora sua equorumque (Gardthausen; vaporumque or equorum mss.) terga suhsertam … calefaciunt, ‘[meat] which they warm by placing it between their own legs and their horses’ backs’, not, as Shaw (25) has it, ‘between the hind quarters of their horses’. On pastirma see Kaymak, M. G. in Türk Folklor Arastirmalari no. 208 (November 1966) Google Scholar; Riddervold, A., ‘On the documentation of food conservation’ in Food conservation: ethnological studies ed. Riddervold, A. and Ropeid, A. (London 1988) 210–218 Google Scholar; L. Radeva, ‘Traditional methods of food preserving among the Bulgarians’ ib. 38–44.”
Since both the Ottoman Empire and modern Turkey are largely Muslim, I decided to go with a beef version. http://www.grouprecipes.com/95661/pastirma.html. I now have beef being pressed in salt in my refrigerator. I’ll report back in a few weeks.
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