Döner kebab Period BOrigin theory CVerified

Döner kebab took its recognizable form in the Ottoman Empire around the middle of the nineteenth century (roughly 1850 to 1870). Who first stood the spit upright, however, is a different question, and it has never been settled.

Lamb and beef were long at hand in Anatolia, and grilling meat on a skewer was an old habit here. Meat turned on a spit was nothing new: Istanbul miniatures from around 1616 to 1620 show meat roasting over a horizontal spit turned outdoors.

What changed in the nineteenth century was that this horizontal spit was set on end. According to the food historian Priscilla Mary Işın (Bountiful Empire, 2018), kebab restaurants in Istanbul began to use vertical spits, probably to save space. Stacking the meat high, turning it, and shaving off the cooked surface to serve one order at a time ties the method to the urban shop and eating-house, the world of food bought and eaten out.

Several traditions name the person who is supposed to have stood the spit upright. The most often repeated has İskender Efendi (Hacı İskender) of Bursa turning the horizontal roast vertical in the mid-nineteenth century and so completing the modern döner. According to his grandson, Yavuz İskenderoğlu, İskender hit on the idea as a child in the 1850s, at his father's restaurant: roast the lamb standing upright rather than lying flat. The English-language Wikipedia, at the passage that reports the grandson's account, carries a note saying that a source beyond the family's own telling is needed. İskender's name does survive in İskender kebab, a dish of shaved meat dressed with melted butter and tomato sauce. But the claim that he invented the vertical spit itself has no support outside this İskenderoğlu family tradition, and he is not the only one said to have invented it; on both counts, the claim has been rejected.

The other tradition puts Hamdi Usta of Kastamonu ahead of him, around 1830, and neither account rises above family memory.

A photograph taken in the Ottoman Empire around 1853 to 1855 by the British photographer James Robertson is said to be the first to show a döner, and according to National Geographic its unidentified vendor is neither İskender nor Hamdi. Who first stood the meat on end remains unknown.