Sticky Butterfly Wings

"Our friends in the town keep us, as formerly, abundantly supplied with all the delicacies it affords: many of the dishes sent us are excellent; among others some butterfly-things of pastry, which one might blow away, but for the honey their wings are clogged with." 

(James Stanislaus Bell, Journal of a Residence in Circassia during the years 1837, 1838 and 1839, London 1840, vol. 2 p. 417)

This must be one of the most hilarious descriptions of baklava ever. When served baklava in the town of Sinop, the British traveler James Stanislaus Bell felt like eating butterfly wings soaked in honey. Baklava must be one of the most controversial sweets of all times. Every nation over a wide region claims it as their own, and everyone has ideas on how an ideal baklava should be. It is hard to describe it to total strangers like Stanislaus Bell, who apparently had a hard time describing it himself when he first saw and tasted one. 

When we look at history, we see many versions of baklava. Mary Işın, an expert on Ottoman confectionary and sweets, gives examples of its many kinds in her book "Sherbet & Spice": "One of the earliest references to baklava is in a poem by the mystic Kaygusuz Abdal, who lived in the first half of the 15th century. Two hundred trays of baklava / Some with almonds some with lentils. Baklava filled with almonds is only to be expected, but lentils? The closest any other sources come to this is a 19th-century recipe for a baklava filling made with sweetened mashed beans. Perhaps lentils were the poor man's substitute for almonds, or it may be a joke - like the anchovy-filled baklava Trabzon."

As Işın notes, fillings for a baklava can be quite varied, as the options can be mind-blowing. Lentils and mashed beans could...