Kadayif

Kadaif, kadayif, kadayıf, kataifi, kadaifi, katayef or kataïf (Arabic: قطايف) is a family of Middle Eastern pastry products.¹ In modern Turkish usage, kadayıf often refers specifically to fine shredded pastry dough used in desserts such as knafeh and tel kadayıf.²³⁴ Depending on context, the term may refer either to the dough itself or to finished desserts made from it.⁵⁴⁶

The Turkish word kadayıf derives from Ottoman Turkish قطائف (ḳaṭāyıf / ḳaṭaʿif), from Arabic قطايف (qaṭāʾif).² In Arabic culinary usage, qaṭāʾif referred to an older family of pastries,¹⁷ while in Turkish the term later came to denote both the shredded dough and the desserts prepared from it.⁵⁴

Kadayif is of Middle Eastern origin. Medieval Arabic qaṭāʾif is generally regarded as an antecedent of Ottoman and Turkish kadayıf forms, which developed into a broader category of pastries and desserts.³⁸ In Turkish cuisine, kadayıf came to include several distinct preparations, including tel kadayıf and other regional or finished dessert forms.⁸⁴

According to The Oxford Companion to Sugar and Sweets, the oldest known qaṭāʾif appear in a tenth-century Abbasid cookbook.⁷ Mary Işın writes that kadayif originated as a griddle cake in medieval Arab cuisine and was transformed in early Ottoman times into pastry threads cooked on a griddle, a form that later spread widely in the Near East.⁹¹⁰ Turkish scholarship likewise treats kadayıf as an Arabic-derived sweet that later developed multiple forms in Seljuk, Ottoman, and modern Turkish cuisine.⁸¹¹¹²

Modern tel kadayıf consists of very fine strands resembling vermicelli.³ It is produced from a thin batter made with special-purpose kadayıf flour, poured through fine openings onto a heated rotating griddle, where it cooks into hair-like strands.¹³⁴ These strands may be sold fresh, refrigerated, or frozen as an intermediate product, or used in finished desserts.⁴ In Türkiye, tel kadayıf is covered by standard 10344/T3 as a semi-processed flour-and-water product.¹⁴

Finished desserts made from kadayıf strands are typically baked or fried and then soaked in sugar syrup.¹⁵⁸ The strands are also known as kadayif noodles, string kadayif, wire kadayif, tray kadayif, and tel kadayıf, although some of these names are also used for finished desserts.⁸³