Mise en place for gastronomy geography through food: Flavor regions in Turkey

Abstract

The spatial variation of foodstuffs derived from a combination of Turkish culinary culture and geographical conditions, as well as the spatial distribution of kitchen richness, are critical for the development of food culture. Therefore, the main purpose of this study was to determine whether there are statistically significant flavor region boundaries based on the spatial distribution of ingredient proportions in certain dishes. Turkey was selected as the study area because of its diversity in terms of physical and human geography due to its geopolitical location. Four dishes were selected as examples in this study, for which a total of 4098 recipes were compiled from 973 districts. Flavor regions were determined using a spatial mapping technique that considered provinces located in the high-high and low-low regions in the LISA (local indicator of spatial association) ingredient maps, and the Moran's I values were found to be significant at the 0.001 level in a spatial autocorrelation analysis. Overall, 15 distinct flavor regions were identified. These findings provide a significant resource for improving existing destinations and developing new destinations for gastronomy tourism by considering the various flavor regions of Turkish cuisine and their general characteristics.