Turkey.

Two fats divide the map. The Aegean and Mediterranean coasts cook in olive oil — a whole category of dishes, zeytinyağlılar, are vegetables braised in it and served at room temperature — while inner Anatolia and the Black Sea reach for butter and sheep's-milk richness. Yogurt runs through everything as a third pillar: spooned over grilled meat and mantı dumplings, whisked into warm soups, diluted with salt water into ayran, the national drink. Turkey is widely credited as the historic home of yogurt, and the word itself is Turkish.

The pepper deserves special mention. Red pepper flakes — pul biber, of which the mild, fruity Aleppo type is the most famous — and the darker, smokier isot of Urfa are finishing spices as much as cooking ones, usually bloomed in butter and poured over soup, eggs or dumplings at the last second. That sizzling red butter drizzle is one of the signature gestures of the whole cuisine. Tomato and pepper pastes (salça), made in vast quantities each autumn and stirred into stews and pilafs all winter, provide the deep base note that outsiders often cannot place.

Grains are wheat above all: bulgur pilafs in the east and southeast, rice pilafs elsewhere, and an extraordinary bread culture — puffy pide, sesame-crusted simit sold from street carts, thin lavaş and yufka. Stuffing and wrapping things is a national pastime with Ottoman roots: sarma (rolled leaves) and dolma (stuffed vegetables) spread with the empire across the Balkans and Middle East, which is why Serbia, Greece and Lebanon all argue over dishes a Turkish grandmother also claims.

Meat cooking splits into the kebap arts of the southeast — Adana and Urfa minced-meat kebaps, Gaziantep's pistachio-laced skewers — and the köfte traditions found in nearly every town, many proudly bearing their hometown's name. Offal is not fringe food: İskembe (tripe soup) and kokoreç have devoted late-night followings. Seafood belongs to Istanbul and the coasts, where grilled fish, meze and rakı form an unhurried ritual of their own.

Sweets close the meal or accompany tea: baklava at its world peak in Gaziantep, milk puddings like sütlaç, and lokum (Turkish delight). And over all of it, tea — çay, grown on the Black Sea coast, served in small tulip glasses, offered at every shop, ferry and family visit, refused at your own social peril.