Ancient Greek Cuisine
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Ancient Greek cuisine. History of Greek gastronomy. Cooking in historical times, traditional greek ingredients and dishes, greek cooking recipes.
The first references to the dietary habits of Ancient Greece are traced to the texts of classic tragedians and comedy writers; information on the subject is more richly provided in sources pertaining to the Hellenistic Age, the Roman Era and the Byzantine Period. The number of books and studies written in the course of these historic periods, especially on Greek gastronomy, is truly noteworthy. Taking into account the individual references in related works, the amount of avialable information becomes staggeringly large. Suffice it to say that The Deipnosophists, a literary work produced by Athenaeus in the 2nd century AD numbering 30 books, of which 15 have survived into the present, constitutes a mass of references to ancient texts on Greek cookery produced by writers who had lived many centuries before Athenaeus's time. At this point, a couple of interpolations need to be made for the sake of precenting any misconception of the expression "staggeringly large" stated above.
First, the number of extant texts of the pre-Byzantine period is very limited. Today we know the names of many prolific autors and quite frequently, the titles of books with which they are credited. Yet, the contents of these works give us only the information that happened to be recorded by writers and critics of later leriods, such as Athenaeus. The 300 verses of Athenaeus preserved a poetic style from the 4th century BC Other data attributed to this period are fragmentary and the limited number of extantreferences indicate a great bulk of information that did not survive.
Second, it is rarely possible to reconstruct a recipe based solely on the above available information. The ancient Greek cuisine was handed down to us with little specific information. Apparently, the need to make mention of quantities was never felt in the ancient world. For strictly conservative persons, such absence of methodology and quantification is a great pity. On the contrary, more liberal spirits and creative gastronomies view it as a challenge, an opportunity to practice their skills. Certainly, with dishes calling for more thatn 10 and occasionally 20 ingridients, the re-creation of ancient cuisine can turn into a costly and unending exercise.
It appears that in classical times Greeks ate two meals a day, although in the pre-classical period daily meals amounted to three. Breakfast was usually called "αριστον" [ariston] and in the Byzantine period the participle "αριστευσας" [aristefsas] signified not only the student who had earned a mark above "very good" but also someone who had just had his breakfast. Later during the day another meal was served, the deipnon, while Homer also makes mention of the dorpon. In the Hippocratic texts two daily meals are recommended for the sick. Meals of the same type have been recorded with different names depending on the source or the author; breakfast, for instance, is also referred to as akraton or akratiston. It is worth noting that the Byzantines increased the number of daily meals to three and even four. However, they created such a jumble out of the different names they employed to refer to these repasts, that it is practically unfeasable for a researcher who is unfamiliar with the etymology, to comprehend at which hour of the day these meals were served.
The breakfast of the ancient Greeks consisted of bread (a "maza" of barley for the ordinary citizens, artos for the aristocrats) dipped in undiluted wine. It seems that wine for the ancient Greeks constituted a cherished habit and a nutritional element that is rarely absent from the morning table. Their habitual breakfast included dessicated figs, almonds, nuts and other dry fruits that were washed down with kykeon - a mixture of wine, grated cheese and barley-flour (which Circe used to enrich with the addition of honey), goat milk or hydromel, the latter being a drink made from lukewarm water and honey.
Usually, daily meals were confined to two. The first one consisted of leftover food from the previous day's dinner: cuts of meat, fish, pulses, or easily prepared dishes with bread, cheese, olive oil, eggs, fruit and nuts. The main dinner course was occasionally the type of fare served at banquets, always enjoyed in the company of friends. Ancient Greeks were never known to appreciate a solitary meal. In fact Plutarch expressed the following widely accepted opinion: Eating alone is not synonymous with having a meal; it is just an act of stuffing your stomach, which is characteristic of an animal. This mentality, as pointed out by a modern researcher, easily explains the affinity of ancient Greeks for banquets.
There is no doubt that olive oil is the most typical Mediterranean staple. It is the first ingredient that comes to the mind of laymen and nutritionists whenever mention is being made of the Mediterranean eating habits. The latter occurs because only in the region of the Mediterranean is olive oil so omnipresent in the daily diet.
A great many pseudo-mouthed amphorae, that today grace collection of ancient Greek artifacts, were used for the storage of olive oil. Many archaelogical excavations conducted in recent years have uncovered an abundant number of olive kernels, while prehistoric finds from Greek caves suggest olive oil consumption in much earlier times.
In antiquity, the islands of Samos and Ikaria were reputed for the olive oil they produced. At the same time, Attica was both self-sufficient in olive oil and a major exporter of it, which was not the case with the rest of its staples. When Solon rose to power in the early 6th century BC, he prohibited the export of agricultural products with the exception of olive oil. The best olive oil was obtained from green olives (omfakinon elainon). Oil was also extracted from almonds, and occasionally used to enhance the aroma of the olive oil. The latter would be stored in earthenware jugs, a storage method continued to be used in Greece almost until World War II.
Another difference that distinguishes the ancient Greek diet from that of Northern Europeans was the consumption of vegetables and fruit in vast quantities. In fact, certain ancient Greeks, such as Plato, Callimachus and the Pythagoreans, strongly advocated vegetarianism.
Certainly, the fruit and vegetables consumed by the ancient Greeks were not the same as those avialable in the market. Tomatoes, potatoes, peppers and corn, as well as oranges, mandarins, bananas and other tropical fruits were unheard of in antiquity. The ancient vegetarian diet, however, included cucumbers, artichokes, peas, amaranth, gourds, broad beans, turnip, onions, cabbage, horseweed, mushrooms, lettuce, mallow, beetroot, leeks, radishes, garlic, mountain spinach, mustard, asparagus, nettles, and others such a celery, carrots, ect, from which only the leaves were eaten, not the roots.
Seasonings, herbs and spices known and utilized by Greeks included: dill, basil, mint, savory, thyme, caper, cress, galingale, (cyperus), coriander, rue (Ruta graveolens), pine nuts, cumin, fennel, myrrh, chicory, oregano, sesame, mustard, ect. This array of domestic seasonings was complemented by importations such as pepper and silphium (a plant of medicinal powers indigenous to Cyrenaica (Libya), now extinct) - salt and vinegar.
The prevailing range of edible fruit encompassed wild and cultivated pears, plums, cherries, arbutus berries, quince, apples, medlars (loquat), mulberries and blackberries, melons, pomegranates, and the two most highly valued fruits of the Mediterranean in antiquity: grapes and figs. Peaches were later added to the diet.
Among dried fruits were almonds, walnuts, chestnuts, raisins and dried figs.
The relatively large-scale consumption of legumes and cereals is another nutritional characteristic that markedly sets apart ancient Greeks from other European peoples. Legumes and cereals were the fare of the poor and constituted the dietary basis for the majority of Greeks who could not often afford expensive meat, both in ancient and more recent times.
The most common legumes were broad beans, lupines, peas, chickpeas, lentils, and beans; also, quite popular was fava, a thick puree of broad beans. Given the fact that pulses were the stable food of the poor and rarely formed part of lavish banquets, very little is known today about their preparation.
Cereals were chiefly used in bread-making. Our Greek forebearers ate bread on a large scale; alfiton (barley bread) was destined for the popular masses, while artos (wheat bread) was a commodity enjoyed by the privileged few. Among the known types of bread were those made from millet, eikorn wheat (Triticum monococcum), spelt (Triticum spelta) and olyra, a variety of barley that often served as cattle feed. With bread as their basic foodstuff, the ancient Greeks eventually came to devise dozens of methods of using cereals for bread-making; among other things, their inventiveness led tham to add spices to the dough (sesame, mint, fennel), as well as other ingredients such as olive oil, cheese or honey in order to enrich and vary the flavor of the bread.
With the exception of banquets and Homeric heroes, meat-eating was fairly limited. In general, meat was festive fare, reserved for public or private special occasions. This was attributed not to a general, early tendency of the ancient people for vegetarianism, but to the same reason that forced Greeks in the early 20th century to virtually abstain from meat: extensive, abject poverty. Various species of birds, as well as rabbit, hare, wild boar. deer and domestic animals were major meat sources for the people of ancient Greece. Meat was prepared in a variety of ways: broiled over fires on spits or braziers, roasted in ovens, or stewed with vegetables and seasonings.
Tradition holds that Greeks have always consumed more fish than meat. They preferred oily fish such as mackerel, skoumbri (common mackerel), sardines, bogue, whitebait, anchovies, and eel, all of which are of high nutritional value. This preference for oily fish is manifested in the well-known popular saying: "Everything at its time and the mackerel in August", that is, a time at which the fish contains more fat and thus has a better taste.
Archaeological excavations conducted a few years ago in the archaic Greek colony of Massalia (modern Marseille) brought to light 6th-century-BC shipyards. Among the half-finished ships and various artifacts of the era, many tuna tails were found that demonstrates that the diet of ancient Greeks, at least from the 6th century BC onwards, was rich in fatty acids. This discovery did not come as a surprise to paleonutritionists and other specialized scientists since the much earlier archaeological digs at the Cave of Frahthi in Argolis had yielded evidence of large-scale tuna fishing from the middle of the 7th millenium BC.
The Greeks of the classical and subsequent periods inherited this love for fish. They later created a fish sauce (garos) which they poured over all kinds of dishes. The latter was passed on to the Romans under the names garum, liquamen and abdomium.
It would be a serious omission to end this brief account of ancient Greek nutrition without making a passing mention of wine. Other than a daily beverage, wine in essence was regarded as food, and figured prominently at every meal, breakfast included.
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Ancient Greek Cuisine
- list of ancient Greek recipes:
- Stewed chickpeas with pomegranate seeds (Revithia me rodia)
- Chicken ancienne (Myma me kotopoulo)
- Chicken with cracked wheat (Kota me pligouri)
- Tope in mulberry sauce (Galeos me saltsa apo moura)
- Liver in lamb caul (Sikoti se skepi)
- Stuffed dried figs (Xera sika)
Greek Cooking Recipes
Traditional Greek Cooking
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