Kumru Soslu

At a Çeşme kumru stand the last move happens after the heat. The cook splits a sesame-crusted roll, packs it with sucuk cooked over charcoal, slices of salam, kaşar and tomato, presses it until the cheese slumps, then lifts the lid and draws two lines across the meat from squeeze bottles, red ketchup and white mayonnaise. Both come straight from the bottle onto a filling that is still steaming, and the mayonnaise slackens at once into a glossy sheen that runs into the creases of the melted cheese. The first bite is hot cheese and smoky sausage with a sweet-tart edge from the ketchup and a cool, soft richness underneath that rounds off the paprika in the sucuk fat.

The roll is the kumru ekmeği of İzmir bakers, a sesame-topped loaf 16 to 18 centimetres long, wide in the middle and tapered at both ends like the turtledove it is named for. Its crumb is soft and low in salt, which suits a sandwich that spends time in a hot press: the crust flattens and crackles with toasted sesame while the inside stays tender enough to take on sauce. Along the seam the mayonnaise and ketchup seep into that pressed crumb and carry the sausage's paprika and garlic with them, so the last bites at the tapered ends taste of everything in the filling. The press itself is an ordinary toast machine, and it is the heat from its plates that turns the kaşar into the glue holding the layers together.

Each sauce answers something in the filling. The tomato slice supplies a little juice and acid. Ketchup adds sugar and a sharper tang against the sucuk fat, and mayonnaise adds a creamy, cooling fat that eases the sausage's heat. Sliced pickled gherkin and a line of hot sauce are the usual extras for anyone wanting a sour snap or more fire. Held in two hands, the sandwich leaks at both tapered ends, the red and white smear collecting in the paper while the cheese strings out as the bite is pulled away. It is eaten warm on a seafront bench or a beach-bar terrace in summer, and ayran is the usual drink for the salt.

Timing decides whether the sauces work. A roll sauced before pressing would take the moisture into the crumb before the cheese melts, and the base would sag in the hand. A cook who pours too freely sends the cheese and the sauce out of the ends together, leaving the salam and sucuk dry in the middle. Some İzmir diners hold that a proper Çeşme kumru takes no ketchup or mayonnaise at all and that the bottled finish is a snack-bar habit. The stands keep the bottles on the counter anyway, and home recipes follow the same routine: gherkins go in, the sauces are squeezed over, the sandwich goes out in its paper.

In Çeşme the hot, sauced kumru belongs to lunch and dinner, eaten with ayran and pickles, while the cold version with tulum cheese is a breakfast roll taken with strong tea. Beach stands and kumru houses along the peninsula turn out the hot build all summer. The same loaf serves both builds, and the bottle sauces add a sweet, creamy finish to a sandwich whose older form was a cold roll of tulum cheese, tomato and green pepper.

Origin and history

İzmir bakers developed the kumru roughly 150 years ago, a round figure that works as an estimate. They began from the pairing of gevrek, İzmir's name for simit, with cheese, and the first filling was cold: İzmir tulum cheese, tomato and green pepper pressed into the sesame roll. That cold roll was the register's first-listed form and still counts as the standard İzmir kumru, a sandwich of fresh cheese and vegetables with nothing bottled in it.

The hot sandwich came later. From the 1940s onward cooks began putting sucuk, salam and melted cheese into the same loaf and heating it, and the enriched form is called Çeşme Kumrusu. No record names who first squeezed ketchup and mayonnaise over it, and the bottles belong to the stand, not to the baker.

The hot form is written into İzmir Kumrusu's entry in the geographical-indication register as charcoal-cooked sucuk, salam, kaşar and tomato, and the toast-machine, melted-cheese version goes by the name Çeşme Kumrusu, the sandwich the sauces are squeezed over. The İzmir Chamber of Commerce filed the application on 2 October 2014, and the entry was registered as number 262 on 7 December 2017.