Kadaif, kadayif, kadayñf, kataifi, kadaifi, katayef or kataïf () is a family of Middle Eastern pastry products. In modern Turkish usage, kadayñf often refers specifically to fine shredded pastry dough used in desserts such as knafeh and tel kadayñf. Depending on context, the term may refer either to the dough itself or to finished desserts made from it.
The Turkish word derives from Ottoman Turkish ( / ), from Arabic (). In Arabic culinary usage, referred to an older family of pastries, while in Turkish the term later came to denote both the shredded dough and the desserts prepared from it.
Kadayif is of Middle Eastern origin. Medieval Arabic is generally regarded as an antecedent of Ottoman and Turkish kadayñf forms, which developed into a broader category of pastries and desserts. In Turkish cuisine, kadayñf came to include several distinct preparations, including tel kadayñf and other regional or finished dessert forms.
According to The Oxford Companion to Sugar and Sweets, the oldest known qaá¹ÂÃÂþif appear in a tenth-century Abbasid cookbook. Mary Ià Âñn writes that kadayif originated as a griddle cake in medieval Arab cuisine and was transformed in early Ottoman times into pastry threads cooked on a griddle, a form that later spread widely in the Near East. Turkish scholarship likewise treats kadayñf as an Arabic-derived sweet that later developed multiple forms in Seljuk, Ottoman, and modern Turkish cuisine.
Modern tel kadayñf consists of very fine strands resembling vermicelli. It is produced from a thin batter made with special-purpose kadayñf flour, poured through fine openings onto a heated rotating griddle, where it cooks into hair-like strands. These strands may be sold fresh, refrigerated, or frozen as an intermediate product, or used in finished desserts. In Türkiye, tel kadayñf is covered by standard 10344/T3 as a semi-processed flour-and-water product.
Finished desserts made from kadayñf strands are typically baked or fried and then soaked in sugar syrup. The strands are also known as kadayif noodles, string kadayif, wire kadayif, tray kadayif, and tel kadayñf, although some of these names are also used for finished desserts.