kids come running for the great taste of . . . salep

Latecomers (try to come in and find your seats quietly, please) may not know of this site's obsession with saloop and salep, so bear with me while I crank out the dictionary definitions once more:

Although over the years I've consulted many experts in British history and literature (e.g. my mother), none of them have been able to shed any light on the use of saloop in London (or indeed have heard of it).

Rumours that it's still for sale on the streets of Istanbul and even Australia have yet to be substantiated.

And yet maybe I ate some last week without realizing it. In the splendid Δωδώνη (Dodoni) gelaterias in Greece, where among many others I tried the chili ice-cream (actually pineapple flavour with chili syrup, interesting but rather bland) and the perfect yogurt-with-honey flavour (reproducing the only Greek breakfast worth having), tucked away on the back of the menu was a phrase along of the lines of 'we use only the finest salep in our products.'
I suppose that this might tie in with the 400 years of Turkish occupation endured by the Greeks, which they seem strangely keen to remember (the skirts of the National Guard have 400 pleats, one for each year - and if you think soldiers in skirts are odd, you should see the tights - in that heat, the rashes they get must be appalling).
Anyway, it seems that salep smooths and inhibits melting in an ice-cream. And while it was invisible to the taste, at least I've eaten some of it.

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