Baklava Baklava Baklava (, , or ; ) is a rich, sweet dessert pastry made of layers of filo filled with chopped nuts and sweetened and held together with syrup or honey. It is characteristic of the cuisines of the Levant, the Caucasus, Balkans, Maghreb, and of Central and West Asia. The word "baklava" is first attested in English in 1650, a borrowing from Ottoman Turkish . The name baklava is used in many languages with minor phonetic and spelling variations. Historian Paul D. Buell argues that the word "baklava" may come from the Mongolian root ' 'to tie, wrap up,
Baklava of Food and Drink"), written by Hu Sihui, an ethnic Mongol court dietitian of the Yuan dynasty. Uzbek cuisine has ', ' or ' or in Tatar ', which are sweet and salty savories (') prepared with 10–12 layers of dough. There are also some similarities between baklava and the Ancient Greek desserts ' (), ' (), and ' () found in book XIV of the . However, the recipe there is for a filling of nuts and honey, with a top and bottom layer of honey and ground sesame similar to modern ' or ', and no dough, certainly