Winter Preparation and Traditional Pekmez-Making in Çorum

In Çorum, the work done from mid-August to the first weeks of November, when summer vegetables and fruit are plentiful, is known as kış hazırlığı (winter preparation). A 2023 article by the folklorist Altuğ Ortakcı, based on field research in Çorum with five informants living there (interviewed 15-20 November 2022, aged 45 to 65), divides the process into operations based on drying and operations based on boiling, and records traditional pekmez-making in detail. The article notes that there is no graduate study on Çorum cuisine, and that on winter preparation only Esra Duman’s 2020 master’s study Çorum İli Gökdere Köyü Folklor Monografisi (Folklore Monograph of Gökdere Village, Çorum) touches on the subject, in a section titled “preparing winter foods” (pp. 104-114). The information below follows Ortakcı’s article; all the informants live in Çorum.

Operations based on drying

Drying is done in turn for fruit, vegetables and animal foods, with most of the weight on vegetables.

• Fruit: Sour cherries, apricots, pears, apples and plums are picked or bought and dried in daylight. An informant says sour cherries are set aside for jam while pink-rose in colour, and when ripe for compote to be eaten at Ramadan; apricots are pitted and opened, half kept for jam and half dried.
• Vegetables: Green beans and aubergines are dried on strings. Beans are washed and notched in the middle with a knife; aubergines, peeled in stripes, are dipped in salted water and strung in one direction. Stuffing peppers are strung too; in recent years green peppers, courgettes and tomatoes are also dried. Drying starts at the end of August; an informant notes that in very hot weather the produce can get wormy or moth-eaten. Lightly boiling foods and storing them in the freezer is mentioned as a second method.
• Animal foods: The practice locally called et tekeri consists of chopping and boiling meat, mixing it with tail fat, pressing it into a copper cauldron, and hanging the set meat from the ceiling in a cool place; the informants say it is hardly done today.

Operations based on boiling and preserving

According to the article, among the boiling-based operations of winter preparation are pekmez (grape molasses), rose-hip marmalade (locally called perverde), cornelian-cherry marmalade (locally called zuval), tomato and pepper paste, preserved melemen (egg dish) and, recently, breakfast sauces; pickles are added to the preserves. For perverde see Rose-Hip Perverde.

The space: ocaklık, tandırlık, guruluk

Making pekmez requires a covered space in the garden called locally ocaklık, tandırlık or guruluk. The ocaklık is where daily and seasonal work is done, tools are kept and finished products stored. The article distinguishes the tandır, a structure with a chimney system for air flow, from the ocak, a raised-rim pit in which a fire is lit. One informant describes how her family had the attic of an apartment building built like a tandırlık. The article presents the absence of such spaces in city life as one reason traditional knowledge is weakening. For Çorum’s tandır tradition see Çorum Tandırı.

Equipment

The rectangular wooden vessel in which grapes are crushed and their juice extracted is called şınavut / şınavıt, tekne or oluk; juice flows from a channel or spout at one lower corner of its base. The other tools are the copper basin (bakır leğen) that the must flows into, the grape earth (üzüm toprağı, also ak toprak) for the kestirme step, a flour sieve, a colander for tossing the pekmez, a paddle (karıştırma tahtası) and a copper cauldron (banma). An informant says that in the past not every family could afford to own a trough, so one was borrowed or the grapes were crushed at the house of its owner; in the city, grapes are now crushed in burlap sacks and plastic basins may replace the copper cauldron.

How pekmez is made

The process described in the article takes about two days:

1. Crushing: Grapes cut from the vineyard or bought at the market are crushed; women usually do the crushing and children may join in. The juice, called şıra or şire, runs from the channel at the bottom of the trough into the copper basins.
2. Kestirme: Dry grape earth sifted through a flour sieve and katık (strained yoghurt) are added to the must. According to an informant this earth is dug from special wells and is found in certain villages; one named is Çaltıcak village in Çorum, and today it can also be bought in the city at shops selling local herbs and plants.
3. Cooking and settling: The mixture is put on the fire and taken off as soon as the first foam appears, then left to settle for about half a day so the earth sinks to the bottom.
4. Final boiling: The next morning the clear liquid above the settled earth, which the informant calls “the brightness of the top”, is moved to another copper basin and boiled, stirred from time to time with the paddle. Consistency is judged by drawing a spoon line through a little pekmez on a plate and seeing whether the line closes quickly.
5. Dımlama and vinegar: The remainder, containing the earth from the bottom and the foam from the top, is strained in a lined bag; this is called dımlama / dımlatma. The remainder is used to make vinegar, or some people drink the dımlama. Chickpeas are added to the pomace of crushed grapes, which is covered with water and left to stand to make vinegar as well; the stems and waste left from the pomace are called cibre and are buried in the soil as fertiliser.

Storage and consumption

Pekmez used to be kept in glazed earthenware jars with the mouth closed with white cheesecloth and string; today glass jars are preferred. In the tandırlık, on wire cabinets and shelves, dough products are stored through the winter alongside fruit, vegetables and meat; yufka bread, prepared in quantity, is kept on a round woven-branch tray called sele / sedire, moistened when it is to be eaten and folded like a letter to bring to the table. The article lists karaçuval helva, hasıda, baklava, pestil, pekmez jelly and walnut köme as sweets made with pekmez, noting that it cannot be claimed these are unique to the region but that they are still known and made. For pekmez-based products see Alıç Pekmezi and Karaçuval Helvası.

Oral tradition and transmission

The informants’ memory of oral genres is recorded as weakened, and apart from short prayers said at the start and end of the work, no rhymes or folk songs were found. The article’s emphasis is that this knowledge can be transmitted only through practice, and that the shrinking of space for the practice in the city weakens transmission: one informant describes how after two years without making pekmez they forgot some details and, not remembering to take the pot off the fire at the first foam, made the pekmez too thick.

Sources

• Altuğ Ortakcı, “Halk mutfağında kış hazırlığı: Çorum örneği” (Winter preparation in folk cuisine: the case of Çorum), Uluslararası Türkçe Edebiyat Kültür Eğitim Dergisi, 12/4, 2023, pp. 1872-1889. https://dergipark.org.tr/tr/download/article-file/3055279