I agree, it's a wonderful book.

One impression that I got from the book that the notes below leave out is
the favored status of fish in the diet of the Athenians. As I recall, the
author felt that fish of various sorts was highly prized and sought after
as a food because, since they were not sacrificed as meat was, the buyer
could both eat as much as he could afford/wanted and could also buy the
quality of fish that he purchased.

toodles,gretchen

--On Tuesday, February 10, 2004 10:33 PM +0000 Lazarus Cooke
> wrote:

> 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