Vintage Recipe Mystery: What's a "Cheese Turk"?

So..do y'all remember when I reviewed Turkey Dinner Candy Corn?

Today, we’re revisiting the 1960s Design for Living cookbook from employees of the Southwestern Bell Telephone offices in Oklahoma. There are many, many doozies in this cookbook: unbaked fruit cake made with crushed graham crackers, raisins, and gumdrops; mashed fruit in ice cubes for reasons no one understands; goulash with creamed corn and olives; enchiladas made with canned tortillas.

Makes two trays…of what?

Stay tuned for more on canned tortillas in the coming weeks…

But my absolute favorite to be horrified by? Cheese Turks.

Cheese, okay. Turkey, okay…and then powdered sugar?!? What? It’s definitely disturbing enough to hold my attention, but the real clincher for me is the mystery of its origins.

I have NO IDEA where this recipe came from, and I can’t tell what they will be like when they’re done. At first glance, there’s nothing Turkish about it. Turkey was unknown in Turkey until the last hundred years, and actually, in Turkey, they call turkeys “hindi” out of the mistaken idea that they’re East Asian Indian. (It’s been an issue of some confusion for many cultures since 1492, as you may remember from a history class that was probably inadequate in its own right.)

It’s mainly the caraway that makes me wonder whether it’s based in some old European recipe, and there are a few clues. There’s a Turkish shortbread called un kurabiyesi that is rolled in powdered sugar, and Turkish cuisine does use caraway a bit, as in this borek recipe. It uses nigella seeds more, but they are also called black caraway, and maaaaaaybe that’s what this originally called for.

Romanian Saratele are a sort of savory cheese shortbread with caraway, too. There’s a star on the Turkish flag, but I can’t find any traditional star-shaped cookie or biscuit from that area with poultry in it, especially not rolled in sugar.

Maybe I shouldn’t turn up my nose — a Turkey Monte Cristo with jam and powdered sugar is a beautiful thing. But still, this recipe is a real mystery to me. I even looked through my Caucasus cookbook and searched newspaper archives, which have never failed me before, and came up empty for anything substantially related. It may be regional, but while it’s possible someone in Alabama with the last name McWilliams was making an unusual traditional Caucasus area recipe, my favorite theory is that our friend Viva creative palate, and this is her own creation designed for her own enjoyment...or perhaps amusement, as she served it at employee potlucks and snickered to herself when everyone felt obligated to take one. In that scenario, they’re called “cheese turks” because they have cheese and turkey in them, obviously.

Whatever they turn out to be, I don’t think I will want 8 dozen. Let’s go for 1/8 of the recipe — 1/4 c grated cheddar, 1/16 lb butter is 2 T, just under 1 oz minced turkey, 1/4 c flour, 1 T chopped nuts, 1/8 tsp cayenne, dash of salt, and a dash of Worcestershire, plus powdered sugar and caraway for rolling. (I have some black caraway on hand, so that’s what I’ll use, and I forgot to put the chopped nuts in the photo, but I did add them).

I am 100% perplexed by the baking instructions — it’s the lowest biscuit or cracker temp I’ve ever seen at 250 degrees, and it specifies that you don’t want any of that pesky and delectable browning. I actually wondered whether it was a typo, but 20 minutes at 350 for these teeny things would definitely cause browning.

Okay then, I guess we’re doing squishy l’il biscuits. Since there are only 1 dozen of them, I’m going to make them into those fussy star shapes. I can’t imagine doing it with the whole recipe!

It’s important to mince and chop everything very finely and mix the cheese and butter together as well as possible, because these are supposed to be really small if this amount of dough is going to make up to a dozen…crackers? biscuits? If you have big bits in there, your shaping will be lumpy/fall-aparty.

And believe me, shaping is hard enough. All I could figure out was sort of flattening with one thumb and first finger, and pinching with the other. I got worried that they would be too fragile, and the butter was getting hard to work with, so I left some in sphere form.

After baking for 20 minutes, they seem firm-ish, but I gave them another 5 while watching carefully for any unwanted delicious browning. Above in the 3rd photo, they are all baked up. With no leavening, they more or less kept their shape, but the stars are even wonkier than they were when they went in. Here’s hoping the flour in the middle is food safe!

Now to figure out when to coat them in powdered sugar. Too hot and the sugar will melt. Too cool and I’ll bet the nigella seeds don’t stick. I tried these at different stages of heat retention, and you can tell the ones that were still pretty warm did melt, but also, as I suspected, that’s when the seeds stuck best. The ones rolled when cool had to have the seeds pressed in a bit, or they just fell off. Also, even when totally cool, the butter soaks into the powdered sugar and they still look sort of oily to me. They’re even sticky in spots.

Time to taste, alas!

Welp, these are weird. They are best stone cold, which is good since they are apparently intended as a party appetizer…or maybe someone was eating 20 Cheese Turks a day for meal prep. They definitely smell like turkey, and that’s also the most prominent flavor, followed closely by the sugar. I can’t taste the cheese much. I think the seeds are really important, because otherwise they look exactly like a powdered shortbread, and a person eating one of these unawares might lose consciousness.

The texture is really odd. Due to the low baking temp, although they are minimally cooked in the middle, they’re not crisp anywhere. It’s not like I make such things often, but I do get the retro sweet/savory grape jelly meatball appeal, and yet the combo in this context is unfortunate. You can taste the cayenne, but they’re not spicy, and the powdered sugar only on the outside makes them messy without contributing to a cohesive flavor experience. I had a terrifying flashback to the sugared roasted turkey flavor of Brach’s Turkey Dinner Candy Corn, and it took me, a professional, half an hour to recover. If you’re untested in the shock candy realm, you could suffer permanent damage.

If you make these (and unless spongy candied turkey sounds like your own culinary nirvana, you shouldn’t), maybe skip the powdered sugar, press in a few seeds before baking, and try at least a 300 degree baking temp for a shorter time. Most cheese straw recipes are more like 400, so the 250 is definitely the outlier here. Instead, make Betty Crocker’s tried and true Bisquick sausage balls, which are terrible for you but taste like angels made sausage balls.

Better yet, try this more nutritious version from The Peachie Spoon. They’re baked at 350, and there’s no powdered sugar in sight, I promise.

Need food-first, picky eater-friendly, non-judgmental help with nutrition? You can schedule an appointment with me through Nourish here. I promise I will not suggest you eat ketchup cookies or Jell-O salad. I see lots of diabetes, neurodivergence, allergies and GI conditions, autoimmune and inflammatory disorders, and weight management whether for increase or decrease — adults, teens, and kids. We take most insurance, and most often, the copay is $0.

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