The candy that tempted Edmund in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is also an ancestor of the jelly bean. This episode looks at Turkish delight, or lokum, starting with its chemistry: a gelatin-free gel in which heated starch granules burst and form a net that traps sugar syrup. It is flavored with rose water, bergamot or mastic resin and dusted with icing sugar and cream of tartar. Its name traces back to the Arabic phrase meaning comfort of the throat.

We challenge the popular claim that Haci Bekir invented lokum in Constantinople in 1777, since Persian starch and sugar sweets existed centuries earlier. From there the candy travels: baked into Armenian cookies, reworked as Karachi halwa and renamed Bombay halwa after the 1947 partition, and covered in chocolate as Fry’s Turkish Delight and Canada’s Big Turk. We finish with its role at Turkish weddings and Eid, and its protected status in Cyprus.

• How starch gelatinization gives lokum its soft, chewy texture
• Mastic gum, the tree resin once chewed to freshen breath
• Ninth-century Persian starch candies worn as necklaces at Nowruz
• How the 1947 partition turned Karachi halwa into Bombay halwa
• Why lokum served with strong coffee is a ritual of hospitality