The Timeless Influence of Ancient Greek Culinary Art

Ancient Greek Symposio

Anyone interested in understanding ancient Greek diet and cuisine needs to keep one key fact in mind: the raw ingredients available to the ancients were quite different from what we have today.

What could be more “Greek” than a refreshing tomato salad paired with crispy fried potatoes? Yet these two dishes were completely unknown in antiquity, simply because tomatoes and potatoes didn’t exist in their world. It wasn’t until the discovery of the American continent in the 15th century AD that these products reached Europe, and they arrived in the Greek region even later.

That said, many fundamental ingredients have remained unchanged from antiquity to the present day: olive oil, dairy products, various fruits and vegetables, and pulses such as lentils, chickpeas, and fava beans. Almost everything in the ancient world was infused with religious significance, so it’s no coincidence that three of the most essential components of ancient Greek diet, the olive oil, the bread, and the wine, are linked to gods.

The olive tree was a gift to humanity from Pallas Athena. Cereals, as their very name suggests (Ceres is her Latin name), were a gift from the goddess Demeter, and it was the Eleusinian prince Triptolemos who undertook to spread them throughout the world.

Wine was a gift from the god Dionysus, intended for human happiness, and the Greeks made sure to share it with the entire known world.

The Beloved “Pasta” of the Ancient Greeks

Pasta is one of the most popular foods worldwide, and Italy is universally acknowledged as its homeland. There are many theories about its origins, but the topic is still surrounded by confusion. For example, plenty of people believe Marco Polo brought pasta to Europe from China in the 14th century AD. That, of course, has been proven to be nothing more than an urban myth, created in the United States and traceable to a publication by an industrial food association aimed at promoting pasta in America.

In modern Greek we call most pasta “makaronia,” but where does that word come from? In Italy, pasta is called pasta, while maccheroni refers to a specific type. The Italian word pasta comes from the Latin pasta, meaning “dough,” which in turn derives from the Greek pasta (παστά), meaning “barley porridge.”

By common agreement, the word “makaroni” (macaroni) comes from the ancient term makaria, a kind of barley broth served in honor of the dead, who were called makares meaning “the blessed” or “happy ones.”  We still see this word today in the traditional Christmas sweets beloved by Greeks: the famous melomakarona!

We don’t know exactly where the first pasta was invented, and we’re certainly not claiming the ancient Greeks ate carbonara or bolognese at their symposia. What we can say with certainty, however, is that ancient Greek cuisine included preparations that could very well be called pasta—or at least the ancestors of pasta.

A 5th-century cookbook describes a dish called lagana, consisting of layers of dough filled with meat—a likely precursor to modern lasagna.

Pyramids: The Sweet That May Have Given Its Name to Egypt’s Massive Monuments

In ancient Greek, the word pyros mean wheat. Combined with honey, the ancient Greeks created a conical sweet associated with the Eleusinian Mysteries; it was given as a prize in athletic competitions! This sweet was called pyramis, meaning a small wheat-based confection, and it gave its name to the geometric shape of the pyramid—and very possibly to the famous Egyptian pyramids themselves because of their shape. The ancient Egyptian word for pyramid (mn) has no connection to “pyramis,” which is purely Greek. So it’s highly likely that the name by which these enormous Egyptian monuments became known derives from this little ancient Greek sweet.

The roots of the famous Cheesecake

The Greek "roots" of Cheesecake

The history of the dessert we now know as cheesecake probably has its roots in ancient Greek pastry-making. In antiquity there was a similar sweet called plakous, whose basic ingredients were flour, fresh cheese, and honey.

There is evidence that small cheese-based sweets were given to athletes as an excellent energy source, and that they were also served at weddings or birthdays. Athenian plakountes were considered the best, thanks to the exceptional Attic honey. We even have a 5th-century BC recipe from Aegimos: “Beat the cheese until smooth, mix it in a bronze vessel with honey and wheat flour, bake the mixture into a single mass, let it cool, and serve.”

In modern Greece, cheese-based sweets have survived in many traditional forms, such as kalitsounia, lychnarakia, or myzithropitakia.

Garos: The Delicious Secret of the Ancient Greeks

The kitchens of the ancient Greeks and much later those of the Romans and Byzantines, shared one common ingredient found in virtually every ancient recipe: a sauce made from small fish, mainly anchovies, produced through a long fermentation process. It was called “garos” and was first prepared by the ancient Greeks. After the Roman conquest, the Romans renamed it garum and turned it into something of an obsession, believing everything tasted better with a dash of garum.

Could garos have hidden a flavor secret? Let’s travel to Japan, the birthplace of a new word that’s becoming a standard term in modern gastronomy’s vocabulary: umami.

Umami is a term coined in 1908 by Japanese chemist Kikunae Ikeda, a professor at the University of Tokyo, in his effort to name the so-called “fifth taste” that complements the traditional four: sweet, salty, sour, and bitter. Umami could be translated into Greek as “savory deliciousness”, and we perceive it through receptors that respond to glutamic acid. This substance is found in significant amounts in meat broths and in fermented foods. Since umami has its own dedicated receptors and isn’t merely a combination of the other accepted tastes, scientists consider it a distinct basic taste. For many people, their first encounter with umami comes through breastfeeding, as human breast milk has been shown to contain a notable amount of this fifth taste.

Given all this, the ancient obsession with garos now makes perfect sense. Chemical analyses have shown that one of the highest natural concentrations of glutamic acid is found in fish, especially fermented ones, while the humble anchovy (known as anchovies) is one of the richest sources of umami.

Vegetarianism, or Rather “Abstention from Meat,” Was a Trend in Ancient Greece

Pythagorean Diet

Many believe ancient Greece was a society where meat consumption was very common, but the truth is that meat was eaten rarely and almost always only after being sacrificed first!

What we today call vegetarianism (vegetarian – vegan) was the widespread “abstention from ensouled beings” of Greek antiquity. The ancient Greeks believed that abstaining from meat benefited not just the body but also the spirit, and they called it “abstinence from living creatures.” They spoke of love for animals and believed human decline stemmed from violence against them. They also held that the first humans were not violent but lived by eating fruits, with no need to cultivate because the earth itself provided all the food humans and animals required. That era was known to the Greeks as the “Golden Age.”

Many ancient Greek philosophers were vegetarians, such as Pythagoras, Socrates, and Plato. Indeed, until the 18th century, vegetarians were also called “Pythagoreans.”

The Precious Ancient Greek Spice Called Silphium

Silphium was a plant used in antiquity both as a spice and as medicine. It was the main export product and the greatest source of wealth for Cyrene, an ancient Greek city on the coast of present-day Libya… It was so important to the city’s economy that its coins featured an image of the plant. It was known to the Minoans, and according to myth, it was a gift from the god Apollo. Silphium is considered an extinct species today, and the exact reasons for its disappearance are not fully known. The plant grew exclusively along a narrow coastal strip in Cyrenaica and could not be cultivated anywhere else. Pliny even mentions that the last stalk of silphium was presented to Emperor Nero as a curiosity.

For the Greeks, food was not merely about satisfying physical needs—it was also a social event. As Plutarch put it:

“We do not sit at the table to eat, but to eat together.”