Beyond a single recipe: A review of Turkish tarhana's biocultural diversity, terroir, and rebirth as a functional food

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Amanpour A.

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF GASTRONOMY AND FOOD SCIENCE, cilt.43, ss.101409, 2026 (SCI-Expanded, Scopus)

Özet

Tarhana, a traditional fermented cereal-dairy product, is fundamental to Turkish and Middle Eastern culinary

heritage. Despite growing scholarly interest, existing research remains fragmented across historical, ethnogastronomic,

microbiological, and functional domains. This review addresses this critical gap by reframing

tarhana as a complex biocultural system shaped by terroir and traditional knowledge. Structured as a comprehensive

narrative review guided by a systematic literature search of 153 sources, this work addresses a critical

gap in the literature where existing studies lack an integrated synthesis. Unlike prior fragmented studies, this

work provides the first comprehensive 24-variant catalog and terroir-based analytical framework. Consolidating

evidence from diverse sources, the review explores tarhana's nomadic origins, dual fermentation science, and

vast regional diversity, while contextualizing it through a structured comparative analysis with global analogues

such as kishk, trahanas, and tarkhineh. Furthermore, the review critically evaluates tarhana's rebirth as a functional

food, integrating recent metagenomic and volatilomic evidence to highlight its gut-health benefits. A key

update positions postbiotics, rather than live probiotics, as the primary health driver in the final cooked soup.

The work explicitly links tarhana's biocultural diversity to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals,

emphasizing the urgency of documenting endangered varieties listed in the Slow Food Ark of Taste amidst a 77-

percentage-point intergenerational knowledge decline. By linking heritage preservation with modern food science,

this work provides actionable outputs, including a standardized ethnographic documentation protocol and

a microbial heritage biobank framework, underscoring tarhana's potential as both a cultural artifact and a model

for interdisciplinary research.