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Byzantine Cuisine
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Byzantine cuisine. History of Greek gastronomy. Diverse tasters, traditional greek ingredients and dishes. Cooking in historical times, traditional greek ingredients and dishes, greek cooking recipes.

Byzantine cuisine. History of Greek gastronomy. Cooking in historical times, traditional greek ingredients and dishes, greek cooking recipes.

Byzantine Cuisine

As was the case with earlier historical periods, the Byzantine era also yielded abundant and often vivid information on nutritional habits and patterns. Our knowledge, however, of general culinary practice and especially of specific recipes and quantities of ingredients is disappointingly meager. An exception to this general dearth, albeit a minor one, is information traced to monasteries and the so-called mageiria (eating houses), as pointed out by Elias Anagnostakis.

The exploration of Byzantine daily culinary practice is further hampered by the fact that, in literary style, the Byzantine autors and scholars modeled themselves after the ancient Greeks to such an extent that the over-classicized language to which they adhered turned out almost unintelligible. This reality blurred the picture not only of the field of gastronomy but of many other areas of life as well.

Among the vast quantities of information on the foods of the Byzantines, only a limited amount of it could qualify as recipes. While in earlier and subsequent periods, legumes, vegetables and fish ranked high among the dietary preferences of the Byzantines, we can only guess as to the preparation of these foods. The study of etymology can assist in this regard, on the basis that certain words are occasionally suggestive of modern Greek dishes. However, it does not always lead to firm conclusions.

For instance, it cannot be established with certainly that the gardoumenon or gardoumion, of medieval vocabulary, is the same as the modern Greek dish, gardoumba (small rolls made from strips of lamb offal, bound with intestines and baked).

There is, nevertheless, one element that upholds this conclusion. This is the conservative nutritional mentality and cooking methods that persisted at least until the second half of the 20th century. In earlier times, radical changes had occured on a small, sporadic scale. Most major changes were introduced in recent times under the influence of globalization on human society, the development of mass media, and the determining presence of financial interests in the food sector. International corporations post advertising expenditures that equal or even exceed the state budget of many African countries.




Cereals » Byzantine cuisine

Egypt had always been the chief grain supplier to the great empires of thr Eastern Mediterranean, both the Byzantine and Roman. When Egypt fell into the hands of the Arabs at the turn of the 7th century BC, the plains of Thrace took its place as the chief source of grain for the region.

In general, the cereal-based dietary habits of the Byzantines was about the same as that of ancient Greeks. Katharos artos ("clean" or "white bread") was eaten by the affluent while the poor had ryparos (dirty) brown bread - referring to the fact that not all the bran (with its nutritional elements, as we know it) had been removed. The cheapest bread was piteratos (full of bran) and denoted "a state of abject poverty", as pointed out by Byzantine scholar, F.Koukoules.

As always, the poor had very little to eat, and although they lived at subsistence level, what they did eat was more nutritious. The healthy nature of their diet, however, did not keep them from complaining that they could not relish the same foods as the wealthy. A case in point is a comment made by some monks on the diet of the abbots: "They have semolina, while we content ourselves with bran".




Wild greens and vegetables » Byzantine cuisine

Due to fasting, the Byzantines incorporated fresh vegetables and wild greens in their meals much more often than the ancient Greeks, although the varieties consumed in both historic periods did not vary considerably. Compared with the modern age, fresh vegetables and wild greens were given different names and varied in their cooking method; for these reasons, it is worth mentioning a number of them. The Byzantines ate mallows (mallahi) and nettles (knide), the foods of the poor. Theodore Balsamon, expressing his dislike for eunuchs, referred to their nature as being rich with nettles (κνιδοχορτοπλοθτον ευωοθχων φυσιν). According to a later proverb "The nettles that grow in villages are tender like lettuce", equivalent to our "Half a loaf is better than no bread at all". The discontent conveyed in the above expression should not overshadow the truth about this type of food. In terms of nutritional content, both mallow and nettles rank among the most important food plants man has at his disposal. It is easy, therefore, to understand that regardless of the availablity of food, the poor enjoyed the benefits of a healthy diet, something reflected in the robustness of their children.

Moreover, the Byzantines used to eat poppies prior to their blossoming time. Vegetables popular in those times included the leboutia (i.e. orache, a salad dish eaten raw or boiled), spanaki (spinach), blita (amaranth), lapatho (sorrel), sinapia (mustards), vrakalides, sparangia (asparagus), galatsida (sow-thistle), frigion (cabbage), anthokramvi (cauliflower), gonghilia (turnips), kinara (artichokes), indiva (endives), angouri (cucumber), tetrangouron (green melon), rafanides (radishes), karota or dafkoi (carrots), gourds, mazizanion (eggplant), onions, garlic, ect.

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