Sephardi Jews are the descendants of the Jewish community of the Iberian Peninsula — Spain and Portugal — who were expelled by the Alhambra Decree of 1492, the same year Columbus reached the Americas. Approximately 200,000 Jews were expelled from Spain, dispersing primarily to the Ottoman Empire, North Africa, Italy, and the Netherlands. The Ottoman Sultan Bayezid II actively welcomed Sephardi refugees, and major Sephardi communities established themselves in Constantinople, Thessaloniki, Izmir, and across the Balkans. Thessaloniki in particular became a majority Sephardi city, with Jews comprising over half the population by the 16th century.

Sephardi communities maintained Ladino — Judeo-Spanish, a language derived from medieval Castilian — as their primary language for centuries after the expulsion, and their food traditions retained Iberian characteristics while absorbing ingredients and techniques from their new Ottoman and North African environments. The result is a dessert tradition that combines Spanish almond and egg-yolk techniques with Middle Eastern spicing — orange blossom water, rose water, saffron, cardamom, and sesame.

Biscochos are twice-baked ring cookies flavored with anise or sesame, descended directly from Spanish medieval baking and eaten across Sephardi communities from Turkey to Morocco. Tishpishti is a semolina and almond cake soaked in lemon or orange syrup, made for Rosh Hashanah and other celebrations. Pan de España — also called pan d’Espanya — is a light sponge cake that retains its medieval Spanish name across Sephardi communities. Bourekitas are small filled pastries made with oil-based dough, filled with cheese, potato, or spinach — savory in origin but with sweet variants using fruit or nut fillings.

The Holocaust devastated Sephardi communities in Greece and the Balkans — 96% of Thessaloniki’s Jewish population was killed at Auschwitz-Birkenau between 1943 and 1944, ending what had been one of the most significant Sephardi cultural centers in the world. Sephardi food traditions from Greece and the former Yugoslav states were largely preserved by survivors and their descendants in Israel, where Sephardi and Mizrahi communities together now constitute the majority of Israeli Jews.