I've always had an interest in trying foreign foods.  While living in Turkey last year, someone once mentioned tavuk göğsü--chicken breast pudding--and I was immediately intrigued.  It was exotic enough to make for a good story, but harmless enough (c'mon, its just chicken with milk!) that I didn't have any reservations about trying it.

When I first had the chance to tavuk göğsü, I was shocked-- it was absolutely delicious, and it didn't taste the slightest bit like chicken.  I've had it many times since then, but it's always remained somewhat of a mystery to me.   

Although I still don't quite understand how the chicken gets into the pudding, Michelle Humes at the Atlantic has an excellent review of tavuk göğüsü's forgotten history as a European staple, and why it's legacy is lost in the West.

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From Humes's article:

In the fourteenth century, Western Europe couldn't get enough of tavuk göğsü. Known in England as blanc-manger, or "white dish," the pallid chicken pudding appears in English, Italian, and German cookbooks of the period. It even manages a cameo in The Canterbury Tales. In those days, sugar was both a luxury and a novelty, and the few who could afford it would grate it over almost anything. A cook would add it to rabbit covered in gravy, and wouldn't have to think twice about whether a rosewater cheesecake would make a good accompaniment to roast fowl. 

All of this changed with the European colonization of the Americas, where sugar cane quickly became a leading crop. As sugar grew cheaper and more accessible to all levels of society, the wealthy no longer needed to demonstrate their status by sweetening everything imaginable. Sweet and savory diverged; blanc-manger remained a popular dish, but gradually lost its chicken. Today, a blancmange is a sort of sturdy panna cotta.

It's not clear why tavuk göğsü lives on in the East when it has died out in the West, but the answer just might be chocolate. When the conquistadors brought cacao back from the New World, they served it just as the Aztecs did: in unsweetened, liquid form, not unlike coffee. In The True History of Chocolate, Sophie and Michael Coe suggest that Middle Eastern cultures were so attached to their coffee that they had no use for a second, competing beverage.

Europeans, on the other hand, were more accepting, and it wasn't long before curious cooks began incorporating chocolate into their cakes and ices. Today, the Turkish pastry tradition continues almost unchanged since the early days of the Ottoman Empire, and Western desserts are dominated by chocolate.