In article >, Ashley
> wrote:

> Hi, I'm doing a report/project for school, and it requires that I make
> find informmationon food from Ancient Greece. I also need a report with
> it(about the food and how it was used). Currently, I'm having a hard
> time finding anything about Ancient Greek food/culture/etc. If anyone
> has any recipes of Ancient Greek foods, that would be great. I need the
> recipes by Tues. If you can provide me with any recipes, I'd appreciate

Hi again, ashley.

The book is called "Courtesans and Fishcakes", by James Davidson. It is
quite brilliant, and I wanted to make a television series based on it
some years ago.

Here are some of James's notes. If you use them for your
report/project, make sure you give him the credit. It won't do you any
harm. On the contrary.
__________________________________________________ __
Ancient Greek food. From the notes of James Davidson (author of
"Courtesans and Fishcakes")

Many classical Greeks probably ate only one meal a day, the deipnon,
which belonged to the evening. Others ate also the ariston, often
translated `breakfast', but perhaps better seen as any meal which was
not a deipnon. It carried negative associations for many authors, and
implied, perhaps, daytime drinking. Each meal was formed around
another dualism of sitos, the staple (barley or wheat), and opson,
everything else. Plutarch says that in his time children were trained
to take bread with the left hand, opson with the right. Taking too
much opson led to a charge of opsophagia (unbalanced, indulgent
eating).
Because it was more tolerant of drought than wheat, the mainstay of
the Greek diet was barley, a cereal the Romans considered chicken-feed.
It was with barley that the helots paid their Spartan masters, and the
masters made their contributions to the common mess - barley cakes were
even used as ballots, to coopt new members. In 329/8 (a bad year?),
tithes offered to the goddesses at Eleusis indicate a barley-harvest
more than ten times that of wheat [x-ref. to Paul, 5]. Barley was
usually soaked and toasted before it was turned into porridge or cakes
(mazai, probably soft, moist agglomerations rather than baked loaves),
and a barley-roasting pan was brought by the bride to her wedding.
Cereal-preparation, like wool-working, belonged to the sphere of women.
The selling and the preparation of meat and fish, by contrast, was
normally in the hands of men.
Meat was rarely eaten outside the context of sacrifice - only
inedible parts were burnt for the gods -, which rarely concluded
without a feast, although portions were sometimes taken home or sold.
The Greek for `sacrificer', mageiros, also means `butcher', and `chef'.
Sacrifice, an entire city offering many oxen (the most expensive and
honorific victims) at an annual festival, a household offering a sheep
or a goat to a favourite divinity, an individual pouring out a libation
of a little wine, was the central religious practice, accompanied by
prayers which directed the gods' favour in particular directions. Like
other gifts of robes, property or statues, sacrifice continued a
relationship with the gods which looked backwards (in thanks) and
forwards (in expectation) at the same time. Its effectiveness was
measured in personal or communal success, often of a military or
material nature, and avoidance of disaster. There was nothing
mechanical about this relationship, however. Divine goodwill could be
cultivated or jeopardised but never bought.
Because of the importance of communal sacrifice, we can get an idea
of how much meat was consumed annually by an average Athenian from
sacrificial calendars and the sale of hides, the perquisite, usually,
of the priest presiding. Although outsiders considered Athens
exceptional for the number of festivals and the quantity of sacrificial
victims, even there meat formed a small part of the diet, less than one
twentieth, perhaps, of the amount consumed by modern Europeans.
Despite the extraordinary variety we find in medical writers and
comic fragments, in most cases it would have been lentils or chickpeas
that accompanied the barley cake or bread. Athenian sources treat milk
products as a luxury, although cheese appeared on the tables of the
Spartan mess and was associated especially with the more pastoral
culture of Sicily. Olive oil, wine and figs completed the diet.
________________________________________________

Good luck


Lazarus

If you're really stuck and need more, email me at

lazarus (at) STUPIDcurlewfilms dot com

and take out the stupid bit.

--
Remover the rock from the email address