Lumps of ("Turkish") Delight (1860)

[Bapopik at AOL.COM]

   OED has:

RAHAT LOKUM--1856, 1861
LUMPS OF DELIGHT--1870
TURKISH DELIGHT--1870, 1877
LOCOUM--1887

   I haven't checked the Making of America database.


TURKISH LIFE AND CHARACTER
by Walter Thornbury
Smith, Elder and Co., London
1860

VOLUME I
Ill. opp. Pg. 102:  SELLER OF SHERBET.
Pg. 133:
   ...or deals with a mahabiji, or street sweetseller, for that delicious sort of rice blancmange he sells, yellow all through, powdered with white sugar, and eaten with a brass spoon of delightfully antique shape; or he is discussing a shovelful of burnt chesnuts, or a head of maize boiled to a flowery pulp, eaten with a ring of bread, and washed down with a draught from the nearest fountain....
Pg. 136:
   The walls of the shop are hung with long walking-sticks, (cudgels, shall I say?) of that precious and fragrant sweetmeat known in hareems as "rahat li koum," or "lumps of delight," which is a glutinous sort of jelly of a pale lemon or rose colour, floured with sugar, and knotted and veined with the whitest and curdiest of almonds.  It is a delicious, paradisaical gluey business, and horribly indigestible, as I found to my cost.
Pg. 138:
   ...smoking black coffee (half grounds, as the Turks drink it)....
Pg. 142:
   I--I eat lamb, pistachio-nut.  I eat kibob (very nice kibob)--I drink shirab and champagney wine.
Pg. 184:
   Recruited with cherry sherbet, Grimani, armed with about a yard of "rahat likoum" (lumps of delight), stuffed with pistachio-nuts, and the doctor's pocket filled with scorched nuts, we made straight for the Zaptie, or second prison of Stamboul, and arrived in a few streets at the door of the "house of detention" as the Turkish word Zaptie means.