| Tulumba | |
| Alternate Name: | balah ash-sham (Arabic: بلح الشام) |
| Country: | Egypt, Ottoman Empire |
| Region: | Egypt, Countries of the former Ottoman Empire, Balkans, Middle East, South Caucasus |
| Type: | Dessert |
| Main Ingredient: | Flour, butter, salt, water, syrup, vanilla extract |
Tulumba or Bamiyeh (Persian: بامیه; Arabic: بلح الشام) is a deep-fried dessert found in Egypt, Turkey and the regional cuisines of the former Ottoman Empire. It is a fried batter soaked in syrup, similar to jalebis or churros. It is made from unleavened choux pastry dough (usually about 3 cm long) piped with a pastry bag using an open star or similar tip. It is first deep-fried to golden colour and then sugar-sweet syrup is poured over it when still hot. It is eaten cold.
Tulumba literally means 'pump' in Turkish, deriving from the Italian Italian: tromba. The dessert is called pomba in Cypriot Greek and bombacık in Cypriot Turkish. In Armenian cuisine it may be called either pomp or tulumba (Armenian: թուլումբա). Tulumba features in Albanian, Serbian, Bosnian, Bulgarian, Macedonian, Greek (τουλούμπα), Azeri (Azerbaijani: Ballıbadı) and Turkish cuisines. The sweet is also found in Persian cuisine as bamiyeh (Persian: باميه), after the vegetable of the same Persian name (okra), due to its shape. In Hejazi it is called ṭurumba (Arabic: طُرُمْبَة) directly from Italian: tromba, but in Egyptian and some Arab cuisines it is called balaḥ ash-Shām (Arabic: بلح الشام), literally "Syrian dates" or "Damascene dates," though the name may have come from "şambali", another Turkish dessert (the "Şam" in "şambali" corresponding to "Shām" in "balaḥ ash-Shām" and both referring to Damascus). In Iraqi cuisine it is known as datli (Arabic: داطلي), directly coming from Turkish word tatlı.
It is made from a yogurt and starch based dough, which is fried before being dipped in syrup. It is a special sweet often enjoyed at Iftar in Ramadan.[1] It is also commonly sold alongside jalebi, which is prepared in a similar way, but arranged in a web-like arrangement of strips of dough.