We used Turkish Herb Called Sahlep for Our Ice Cream
Salep (Turkish: salep - sahlep, from Arabic: سحلب saḥlab‎, Azerbaijani: səhləb,Greek: σαλέπι salepi), refers to both the orchid as well as to the salep drink. It is a flour made from grinding the dried tubers of Orchis mascula, Orchis militaris and related species of orchids, which contain a nutritious starch-like polysaccharide called glucomannan.

The name salep comes from the Arabic expression ḥasyu al-tha`lab "fox testicles"—a graphic description of the appearance of orchid tubers; compare the classical Greek word ὄρχις, órchis, which means both "testicle" and "orchid" (and is of course the etymon of the English word).^[1] The comparison to testes, naturally, accounts for salep being considered an aphrodisiac.

Nutrition facts

Dondurmas do not include agglutinin when making the ice-cream. Instead, they include short chain and medium chain fatty acids. Dondurmas have softer curds, which helps digest the ice-cream faster for little children. There are lower levels of lactose (4.1 percent versus 4.7 percent in cow's milk). This is an advantage for lactose-intolerant people. Dondurma also outweighs ordinary ice-cream made out of cow milk by: 13% more calcium, 25% more vitamin B, 47% more vitamin A, 134% more potassium, 200% more niacin, 300% more copper, and 27% more antioxidant selenium.

 The chemistry of Dondurma

In July 2008, New York University biochemist Kent Kirschenbaum, with colleagues Anne McBride and Will Goldfarb from the Experimental Cuisine Collective, gave a lecture at a meeting of the Experimental Cuisine Collective about the chemical makeup and creation of Dondurma. The lecture was detailed in this podcast.

This would also show that you are distinguished because the export of sahlep from Turkey is banned. It is registered as the last item on “the List of Materials Banned for export” with the “directive 96/13 Goods Banned for Export or Requiring Special Permission for Export”.

Sahlep, is a warm and sweet drink obtained from numerous types of Orchidaceae family plants’ under-the-earth bulbs. If you look at it from this angle, buying orchids to your lover and offering him/her a drink of sahlep can be comparable. Lumps attached to the roots of orchids are used to make sahlep. In addition, sahlep is also used in ice-cream making and in treatment of some ailments too.

Since sahlep is swollen up when mixed with water and milk, it is widely used as basic material for ice cream. It gives taste and scent to a type of ice cream we inherited from the Hittites in Anatolia and known as Maraş ice cream today. This characteristic makes hard, rich and supreme tasted Maraş ice cream unique across the world. What we are talking about here is the sahlep obtained from a type of orchid that flourishes on the skirts of Kahramanmaraş’s mountains.

In the Ottoman era, sahlep was also used as medicine. According to Ottoman culture, sahlep smoothes the chest. It is good for cough and bronchitis. It heals up constipation. It is good for haemorrhoids. It increases the strength to work. It is good for the heart. It regulates periods. It is good for getting rid of intestine worms. It helps body temperatures. It increases sexual power. All these are not proved to scientific validity but no matter why it is drunk, sahlep is a perfect winter drink.