A Black Sea egg-and-flour dish that sits somewhere between an omelette and a pancake — eggs beaten with a little flour and milk, poured into a hot buttered pan, and cooked into a thin, soft round. It is everyday breakfast and quick supper food along the eastern Black Sea, made savory with chopped greens and herbs, or sweet, finished simply with honey or sugar. Plain, fast, and homey, it is the kind of dish cooked from whatever is in the kitchen.
Kaygana is a home dish of the eastern Black Sea provinces — Trabzon, Rize, Giresun, Ordu, Artvin and inland to Bayburt and Gümüşhane — where eggs, cornmeal or flour, butter and wild or garden greens are kitchen staples. The name and the dish are old and have shifted meaning over time and region: in some places kaygana is firmly savory and herb-laden, in others (and in older Ottoman usage) it leans sweet, closer to a sugared egg-batter pancake. Across the Black Sea it is treated as a humble, improvised breakfast and snack rather than a formal recipe, varying house to house by what greens are on hand.
Soft, tender, and eggy, with just enough flour to hold it together rather than make it bready. The savory version is flecked green through with herbs and mild greens, the edges lacy and lightly browned in butter; it smells of fresh butter and parsley or spring onion. The sweet version is plain and pillowy under a drizzle of honey, the warm egg-batter set but still soft. It folds easily and tears with a fork. Eaten hot, straight from the pan, often shared from the middle of the table.
The batter is essentially eggs loosened with a spoonful or two of flour and a little milk — far more egg than a pancake, far more body than a plain omelette, which is exactly why it lands between the two. The small amount of flour and milk gives a tender set without toughening; over-flouring makes it rubbery. It is cooked in plenty of butter over medium heat so the underside browns and crisps at the edge while the top stays soft; it is flipped once, or folded, depending on the cook. For the savory version the greens are stirred raw into the batter so they wilt as it cooks; for the sweet, the cooked round is simply finished with honey or sugar off the heat.
Variations
The two poles are savory and sweet. The savory kaygana is stirred with chopped parsley, spring onion, dill, or seasonal Black Sea greens, and sometimes a little cheese; the sweet is finished with honey, sugar, or a dusting of icing sugar and is closer to the older Ottoman sense of the word. Some inland versions use cornmeal in place of or alongside wheat flour, in keeping with the maize-heavy Black Sea pantry. Comparable thin egg-pancakes appear under other names across Anatolia, but kaygana is specifically the Black Sea form.
On the Palate
Where Kaygana sits in the Turkish flavor cloud
Ingredients
Serves 3
How it's made
7 steps · 15 min
- 12 min
Beat the eggs well with salt until loose and slightly frothy.
- 23 min
Whisk in the flour and milk to a smooth, pourable batter with no lumps.
Watch outWhisk to a smooth pourable batter — go easy on the flour, over-flour it and the kaygana sets rubbery instead of tender.
- 32 min
For the savory version, stir the chopped parsley and spring onion through the batter.
- 42 min
Melt a generous knob of butter in a frying pan over medium heat until foaming.
- 53 min
Pour in the batter and tilt to spread thin; cook 2-3 minutes until the underside is golden and the top is almost set.
Watch outIt's ready to flip when the underside is golden and the top has almost set — the edge should crisp in the foaming butter while the center stays soft.
- 61 min
Flip and cook the second side about 1 minute, or fold in half.
- 71 min
Slide onto a plate; serve savory as is, or drizzle the plain version with honey, and eat hot.
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