One plate, with pilaf on it, and spaghetti, and a breaded pork cutlet, and a demi-glace or curry sauce poured over. It is sometimes described locally as a children's lunch plate for adults, which is exactly right.

It is thought to have appeared in Nagasaki in the 1950s, though nobody is certain, and the origin of the name is not known either. The pilaf is sometimes dry curry instead; the spaghetti is usually napolitan.

One explanation is geographical. Pilaf came from the Middle East, spaghetti from Italy, and Turkey sits between Asia and Europe; so the plate holding both was given the name of the country in the middle. It is tidy, and it may well have been arranged afterwards.

There is a problem with that explanation, or at least an irony worth sitting with. Turkey has no such dish. It is a Muslim country and pork is not eaten there, so the central component could not appear on a Turkish table at all. The name arrived first and the contents have nothing to do with the place it names. In a port city where things from elsewhere come ashore and get put together, the name appears to have arrived by exactly the same route as the food, and with exactly as little documentation.