Fantastic history of Mediterranean gastronomy (Fantástica história da gastronomia do Meditteraneo)

Mediterranean food has been winning hearts and palates around the world, and it’s not hard to see why.

With its delicate textures, unique flavors, captivating aromas and low-calorie ingredients, it’s much more than just a culinary experience.

It’s a true journey through the history, culture and tradition of this rich region.

With roots that stretch back thousands of years, Mediterranean cuisine is more than just a feast for the palate.

The lands around the Mediterranean share a long history, with many peoples intervening, including a very special one, which has given rise to a very rich Mediterranean cuisine.

Typical of this region are also olive trees, citrus fruits and a huge variety of aromatic herbs, which give this cuisine a special colour and flavour.

Fantastic history of Mediterranean gastronomy

Is the Mediterranean Diet really anything more than a figment of our imagination?

Yet, despite geographical differences and the vicissitudes of history, all the countries of the Mediterranean basin share ways of being and lifestyles.

Mediterranean food is one of those cultural elements that have happily helped to preserve the special nature of the Mediterranean.

There are a variety of products, a culinary system and dining rituals which could be described as Mediterranean. Rules for the preparation and consumption of food are common to the lands that border the Mediterranean.

They offer both stability, continuity and reproduction of a specific pattern of eating which resists conquest, invasion, colonization, social change, industrialization and urbanization.

Therefore, wherever you go, in southern Europe or the lands bordering the southern Mediterranean, you will find a cuisine and gastronomic ritual which is always familiar.

A look at the past

To reconstruct the history of Mediterranean food, you first need to know what the men and women of these countries grew to feed themselves.

You also need to list the animals which they raised for their meat, milk or honey.

You need to know the fish they caught and the game they hunted.

?You also need to see whether they were satisfied with what they produced or whether they relied on foreign products, whether foods were acclimatized or whether the introduction of new products upset the culinary landscape of certain countries or areas in the region.

Finally, you have to take account of political events, natural disasters, everyday patterns of life which determine the degree of sophistication of food preparation and which vary from one people to another due to technological, economic and social differences.

Several parameters also come into play in understanding food and eating: the history and contacts with other peoples and other cultures; the geographical situation, local traditions, rites and myths, agricultural production, religion, changing lifestyles; economic constraints and the impact of rules of consumption and foreign behavior; the effects of globalization of tastes and patterns of consumption.

All these aspects act in concert to determine the dietary customs of a society and form a national culinary identity, or, conversely, to destabilize it in a given sphere.

That said, food is first and foremost a constituent theme of human identity rather than of a regional or national identity.

?Meat already distinguished the food of men from that of the gods and, in the eyes of the ancients, bread, which was complex to make, distinguished civilized man from the barbarian, peoples which practiced farming from those who did not eat bread or drink wine.

Lastly, man’s food behavior is also distinguished by conviviality and the social function of the meal.

In the Mediterranean, the meal is not a simple act of nourishment, but a special place for interaction, raised to the level of religion.

One of the essential features of the Mediterranean dietary model, which has stood up to the constraints of modern everyday life, is the time taken over the meal and the social practices of conviviality.

Even today, in all Mediterranean countries, people spend more time eating than anywhere else.

Although meal times nowadays are adapted to modern life, as is the succession of dishes, people are still attached to eating well and drinking well.

Once upon a time, in towns, the dietary regime and working hours forced artisans and shopkeepers to take additional meals in the countless cheap restaurants or bistros which festooned the streets of the towns and their suburbs.

From Egypt to Italy, street cuisine is still varied and still acts as a social marker: fried, grilled and other cooked dishes which you eat on the spot or take home for a modest sum.

The social function of this cuisine is essential.

It encourages the development of a male-dominated popular sociability which could not occur in the domestic environment.

Furthermore, the food ritual, which marks the high points of Mediterranean life, whatever the religion, still gives rise to many rites and celebrations in which food takes pride of place.

A full calendar of abstinence rites, fasting and penance (Lent, Shabbat and Ramadan) gives rise to a ban on eating certain foods rather than others.

Likewise, each stage of life, from birth to death, has its own type of food and cooking. Dishes, bound in symbols, based on fish and poultry, are not only rooted in a very ancient past, but reflect a community of beliefs and practices which extend beyond religions and languages.

Cakes or confectionery are given at the birth of a child or the circumcision feast; animal sacrifices accompany religious festivals or consecrate the obligations of marriage.

Eggs, symbols of eternity, are associated with funerals.

Among Muslims and Jews, fish has the same place in the nuptial feast.

Finally, foods based on poultry and egg broth, gruel, and dried fruits, specific to a life event, show similarities between the diverse societies of the Mediterranean, both Christian and Muslim.

How can one define the Mediterranean which is a thousand things in one (Braudel, 1999)?

Studying the history of food in the Mediterranean means dealing with a complex phenomenon, because belonging to a common geographical area is not sufficient to make the food practices and customs of the entire Mediterranean world homogeneous.

That is the reason why there cannot be a single unique Mediterranean Diet, but many Mediterranean Diets, in the same way that there cannot be one history, but many histories seen through the re-working of relations between peoples, forged through conquest, migrations and trade at different times.

These constant interactions have introduced and disseminated both the products consumed and the way in which they are accommodated.

Could a coherent model of Mediterranean food common to all the surrounding countries, by which to recognize any Mediterranean-dweller, be derived from such a variety of cultures and diversity of traditions and religious beliefs?

To be conceivable, such a project would, of necessity, focus primarily on a food culture of a Mediterranean society or region whose general geographical, historical and cultural characteristics could be reflected in a model in which all the individual identities were recognizable.

This is true of the food model of the countries along the southern shore of the Mediterranean.

These countries have quite a rich food tradition established in a geographical setting which encompasses the Mediterranean area, rooted in religious traditions (Jews, Christians and Muslims) common to the entire Mediterranean basin, shaped by all its contacts (France, Italy, Greece, Spain , the Ottoman Empire), transfers, borrowings, accommodations and adaptations, culminating in a true blending of cultures.

Let us go shopping with the Mediterranean housewife when she buys her food in the market.

By the things she buys, she straightaway traces the history of these products, their origin, their journey, their social and religious status.

Her shopping basket is arranged like a series of stops in the annals of a globalization that has been going on for centuries, mingling products enshrined in time immemorial and those which were simply adopted, those which are native and those which were surreptitiously introduced to our plates , indigenous products and exotic products.

First it was wheat. A staple cereal in the botanical prehistory of the Mediterranean and an essential component of the vegetable repertoire and the cooking methods of its inhabitants.

A powerful seed of life, it is present at all the festive rites and all the stages of life by the blessing it conveys.

The Greeks sought to define themselves above all as bread-eating farmers as opposed to the meat-eating barbarian, since bread is a processed commodity, a complex product which denotes a high degree of civilization.

Bread has always been (and remains) a subject of special attention of States given its importance in the economic and social justice of the Mediterranean countries.

This wheat can be eaten crushed, as wheat meal, flour, boiled, fried, grilled, in pastry, and so on.

Our shopper will then move on to vegetables, leguminous plants, condiments and other seasonings.

Garlic, onion, leeks, cardoons (cynara cardunculus L.), ancestor of the artichoke, asparagus, aubergines, carrots, celery, salads (cultivated or wild), cabbage, kohlrabi, cauliflower, marrows, courgettes, cucumbers, pumpkins, spinach, chard, lettuce, cos, turnips, parsley, green and red peppers, purslane, radishes, salsifies, tomatoes.

On the list of leguminous plants: peas, dried beans, lentils, chickpeas.

The Mediterranean is extremely attached to these products.

In places where they are not eaten, it is because they cannot grow there.

To provide food which is reputed to be highly seasoned and spicy, you need salt, pepper, caraway, coriander, thyme, rosemary, cumin, fennel, aniseed, nigella, dill, myrtle, Arab senna, rue, juniper, marine wormwood, tree heath, nutmeg, Smyrna galls, cinnamon, cubeb.

Salted products or products preserved in oil: olives, capers, tuna, anchovies, mild and hot peppers and other salted vegetables.

The Phoenician and Carthaginian contribution (9th to 2nd Century B.C.)

Mediterranean food is rooted in the vast cultural world of the Near East where huge quantities of cereals were consumed (wheat, barley, spelt), eaten in the form of porridge, bread, and various types of biscuit.

This food was supplemented by legumes: peas, lentils, chickpeas, broad beans; oil produced in Syria and Palestine since the third millennium and numerous fruits such as apples, pomegranates, quinces, almonds, pistachio nuts, dates and figs.

These fruits, fresh or dried, extremely sweet were substitutes for more expensive substances such as honey in the diet of the poor.

Wine was also drunk with the introduction of vine cultivation. Meat came from raising cattle, sheep, poultry and from hunting.

Homer tells how the Phoenicians (2nd millennium to 8th century BC) traded with Libya which he describes as a land rich in cattle and thus meat, milk and cheese.

Salt extraction complemented fishing. Forests were important, yielding important supplies of game, deer, antelopes, gazelles, wild boar.

Products picked or gathered, along with meat from hunting, had for long been man’s only food, including grasses, roots, tubers, fruits and seeds, which continued to be eaten for many centuries.

The civilization of Carthage was characterized by an agricultural development entirely dependent on Mediterranean trade.

Classical sources provide a whole series of reports of the Carthaginians diet, especially at the end of the Punic era, from which a history of the food production and customs of the first phase of Phoenician colonization of the West can be constructed.

Undoubtedly, these colonies preserved the food traditions of the motherland. However, these Eastern traditions then adapted to local customs, marked by the geography of the Western regions.

Cereals were the chief food of the Phoenician colonies in the West.

The Carthaginians were labeled by Plautus as great eaters of puls punica, a porridge made of several cereals which then served as the basis of the daily meal, and sometimes the only dish, in which cheese, honey and eggs were mixed.

Cereals were also the basic ingredient of a biscuit called punicum.

The presence in many houses of tabounas, earthenware bread ovens still used today in Morocco and Tunisia, show that the Phoenician populations in the West were great eaters of bread, both leavened and unleavened.

Vegetables were grown in the luxuriant gardens and orchards of the large estates.

Olive growing was widespread, as was that of fruit trees: pears, apples, figs, walnuts, hazelnuts, almonds, pistachio nuts, chestnuts.

The date palm, often depicted on votive stele and coins, may have had a religious function, while the Carthaginian pomegranate was so famous at the time that the Romans called it mela punica.

Unlike cereals, for which yields remained modest, the best lands were devoted to olive and vine growing.

Grapes were eaten fresh or dried. Livestock raising (sheep, goats and cows) provide milk and dairy products, but the meat of these animals was only eaten on certain occasions.

North-African votive stele sometimes depicted sheep with a short fat tail, typical of the species still found today in Tunisia.

Fish products were also eaten by the Carthaginians, who ate fish, shellfish and crustaceans (mullet, bass, grouper, sea bream, red mullet, mackerel, sole, tuna, swordfish, prawns, lobsters).

The Roman period (7th to 3rd centuries B.C.)

The Romans intensified the cultivation of olives and vines in all the conquered lands.

They also spread some vegetables (green vegetables) and leguminous varieties (peas, dried beans, lentils, chick peas).

They allowed the agriculture of the regions of the empire to develop and modernise, transforming some regions such as Roman Africa into the breadbasket of the Italian peninsula.

This leap forward was encouraged by the irrigation systems which the Romans introduced, which allowed cereal crops to be extended to southern Tunisia.

Through their colonizing behavior, the Romans thus imposed new productive bases and profoundly changed the food patterns of the territories under their administration.

There had been little or no cattle farming. Used solely as drafted animals, neither their milk nor their meat was consumed.

On the other hand, there were large numbers of hereds of goats, and their milk and cheese were highly prized at the time.

Partridges, pigeons and pheasants were domesticated in the farmyard.

On the eve of the arrival of the Muslim conquerors, North Africa still merited the title of breadbasket.

In 608, Heraclius was so well aware of this that he had no hesitation in using it against Constantinople by suspending supplies of wheat, and perhaps also oil, to the capital.

Sheep farming developed primarily in Egypt and Libya.

The Arab and Islamic influence

The Arab influence was to have a considerable impact on the history of food in the Mediterranean.

Unlike the Romans, who could be said to have fixed agricultural production, the Arabs introduced new products and new farming methods.

This innovation underlines the spread of the agronomic sciences in the region.

The legacy left by the Arabs far exceeds that of the Orient and the New World.

From ancient annona to modern bread consumption

Antiquity provides fairly specific models of state institutions responsible for the supply of cities, notably the ancient annona, dating from the time of Augustus.

It is well known that cereal production in antiquity was limited by the rudimentary technical methods: lack of a horse collar, use of the plow and three-year rotation.

For a city with as large a population as imperial Rome, the requirements to satisfy the urban plebs were huge and the capital of the Empire could not rely on Italian production alone.

Rome had to rely on imports from Egypt and North Africa under its domination and promoted more than ever to the rank of Rome’s main breadbasket.

Regular replenishment in sufficient quantity of cereal products, which were the staple food at that time, was crucial to the political authorities which sought to shelter Rome from food crises by creating administrative systems such as the annual authority, and trade infrastructure such as ports and warehouses.

The demand for good quality bread influenced the choice of cereals, with priority being given to wheat.

African prices for essential commodities were half that of Italian prices.

This shows Africa’s place in feeding Rome, whether through the free market or supplies requiring state procurement in the region.

The Mediterranean was the cradle of the monotheistic religions, so its peoples attach considerable religious and social importance to bread.

Unlike luxury products, however, wheat remains for the southern Mediterranean countries a staple food which cannot in practice be left to the law of the market.

Bread therefore continues to receive special treatment, and is sold at cost or even subsidized by the State.

The arrival of the Arabs was accompanied by the spread of citrus fruits, rice, sugar and pastes throughout the Mediterranean basin.

Spinach (unknown to the Greeks and Romans, and thereafter promoted to the rank of prince of herbs) also made its appearance, along with chard (reputedly one of the plants most appreciated by the prophet of Islam), mallow (especially valued in Egyptian food and the basis of a festive stew among Tunisians for the New Year meal, its green color symbolizing a promise of prosperity).

The aubergine, of Indian origin, was introduced by Arab merchants from Asia.

Okra (hibiscus esculentus L.), of Ethiopian origin, is called gnawiyya in the Maghreb and bemya in the Near East. Cauliflower seems to have followed the same path as certain vegetables of the cucurbitaceous family (cucumber, marrow).

The diet of Arabs settling in the Mediterranean following the Muslim conquest broke with the prophet’s daily diet model, which was chiefly pastoral, unlike the predominantly agricultural Mediterranean model.

The only new and important factor resides essentially in the food prohibitions involved in Islamic principles.

Cereals, especially durum wheat, dominated production.

Soft wheat, introduced by the Romans, was eliminated by the conquerors.

Barley replaced wheat in drier areas with poorer soils and was used to feed the population because it was cheaper than wheat.

Sorghum and millet were also grown.

Olives, the cultivation of which had declined, were again cultivated on the coastal plains of Tunisia.

After the period during which it flourished during the time of the Romans and Byzantines, the vine declined significantly.

The Arabs, who only tolerated dessert grapes and unfermented juice, reduced the number of vineyards.

The date palm, originating from the Persian Gulf and cultivated since the dawn of antiquity, flourished from North Africa to the Indus.

The food of choice for travelers and caravans, dates were appreciated everywhere, especially among nomads, and went well with dairy produce (fresh milk, butter or cheese).

New species of fruit trees were imported, such as oranges and lemons.

Cross-breeding would give rise to new varieties.

Figs, walnuts, pistachio nuts and carobs (eaten ground as flour) were reported at the beginning of the 16th century.

There were also jujubes, limes, citrons, peaches, apricots, plums, cherries, azeroles, medlars, apples, pears, almonds, pomegranates, white and black currants.

Towns were bordered by kitchen gardens in which all kinds of vegetables were grown: broad beans, green beans, lentils, chick parts, aubergines, turnips, cabbages, cauliflowers, chard, purslane, lettuce, endives, asparagus, carrots, garlic, onions, cucumbers, melons and water melons.

Mention should also be made of the cultivation of aromatic, medicinal and coloring plants such as cumin, caraway and aniseed, henna, saffron, oregano, myrtle, jasmine, roses, narcissi, water lilies, goldenrod, wallflowers, marjoram, violets, lilies, thyme, opium poppy and Indian hemp.

Spices came from the Far East: pepper, cloves, ginger, nutmeg, cassia, manna, rhubarb, saffron, aloe, gum.

With few exceptions, the diet was very largely vegetarian.

The Arab world was also the world of pastas, a convenient way of preserving cereals for long periods and adding variety to dishes.

Omnipresent in the Arab diet, based on semolina or flour, they offer a great variety of pastes in the form of strips, ranging from rashta, similar to tagliatelle, fine threads like vermicelli, and couscous, a true Maghreb dish, considered as exotic in the East where it was called Maghrebia, and the presence of which is reported in Europe from 1630 under the name of Courcoussou.

Some Mediterranean food historians have tried to show that the Maghreb diet, in essence, is the heir of Greece and Rome, or rather that it owes little or nothing to the Arabs (Gobert, 2002).

In other words, the Arab conquest did not much change the North African diet, which remained a Mediterranean Diet based essentially on cereals, eaten in the form of bread or porridge, and a profusion of vegetables which, for the Romans, represented the most civilized of all foods, and olive oil, and ancillary to that, meat and fish.

It was on the basis of these elements that it was sought to reconstitute the western origins of the Maghreb cuisine by making the culinary treatise of the rhetor Athenaeus and the cook book of Apicius its main works of reference.

The first is a gastronomic work aimed at an elite few by a certain Apicius, a legendary chef, man of wealth, inventor of dishes, who could spend astronomical sums on his culinary fantasies.

His reputation was such that, in Tertullian’s time, they said an Apicius to designate a cook.

The second reference is to the work of Athenaeus, The fifteen books of deipnosophistae, written about 200 A.D. by this self-confessed despiser of luxury and considered as the oldest culinary work gleaned from observations on the customs of the ancients in hundreds of different authors.

The work, most of which relates to food and its preparation, is full of quotations from the Greek poet Archestrates.

The cuisine of Athenaeus, like that of Apicius, is above all one which abuses exotic species, trade in which had expanded rapidly following the conquests of Alexander.

The Andalusians

The influx of Moriscos from Spain, estimated to be some 120,000 people from 1608, coming from various social classes, enriched the economic, cultural and spiritual life of the Maghreb.

This process disseminated new types of lifestyles, especially in urban areas.

Market gardeners, manufacturers and small-scale industrialists introduced their numerous products and transmitted their manufacturing methods.

Farmers became acclimatized in the plains of northern Tunisia.

The propagation of new plants, irrigation methods, working the land, forms of farming, good seed selection, artisanal or industrial methods to transform agrarian products, the extension of quite new lifestyles, all amounted to an agrarian and food revolution.

This revolution can be explained, in the first place, by the importation from Spain of plants originating in the New World which were still unknown in the eastern Mediterranean: maize, tomatoes, potatoes, pepper, Barbary figs from Mexico, various kinds of beans (Latin beans, mixed beans), certain types of marrow, the West Indies myrtle, paprika, new types of olives, new varieties of vegetables.

Andalusian chard was now distinguished from native chard.

Also noteworthy is the artichoke, which first appeared in North Africa, derived from a wild thistle.

It then traveled to Sicily, then Naples and Florence in 1446.

The Arabic word al-kharchaf meaning thistle, became alcarchofa in Spanish, then articcioco in Lombard, artichaut in French and artichoke in English.

By calling it ard?chok?, the Arabs of the Middle East related the artichoke to its spiny origin.

The Murcian apricot variety, Valencian almonds and Malaga almonds were also introduced into the region.

The vine was reintroduced under the Hafsid dynasty with the first Andalusian immigrants and became widespread from the 17th century (Hassen, 1999).

Alongside traditional breeding of bulls, oxen and sheep, the Andalusians also kept bees.

In some cases, certain products were re-imported.

One such was rice, which had not been grown at all since the 14th century and which was slowly spreading again across the region, via Spain and southern Italy in particular.

It is worth highlighting that its appearance in Spain goes back to the Visigoth period where its cultivation was exceptional and rather late.

In Italy, there are records of rice-growing from the 13th century.

The introduction to the Mediterranean of certain American fruits and vegetables from the 16th century and to North Africa by Morisco traders and growers caused considerable upheavals: tomatoes, peppers, marrows and courgettes, beans, maize (via Turkey), potatoes (via Portugal) introduced into the Maghreb from the 17th century.

In domestic preparations and dishes, primarily women's work, many imports of Andalusian specialties can be seen: cakes, dairy products, cheese and clarified butter, pastas, fritters, fruit juices and new methods of conservation and storage of finished or partially finished dishes.

These dishes can still be found in the food traditions of certain Tunisian cities, such as Testour, where Andalusian refugees settled in the 17th century.

Although reflecting eating habits belonging to privileged social circles, which be transposed to society as a whole Andalusian cuisine has nevertheless retained the reputation of a type of refined society in the image of an idyllic Islamic West which shone as brightly in the arts and literature as in culinary skills.

The Arabs tend to attribute their Ottoman heritage to the Turks, and only the Turks.

Yet rare indeed are Iraqis who know that their tibsi (a dish cooked in the oven) and Tunisians their taps? (an earthenware utensil) derive from Greek tapsi (a tin oven dish).

?That the kharabdj of Aleppo derives from Byzantine kourabiedes (crescent-shaped shortbreads coated with icing sugar).

As for the Moroccans, who remained outside Ottoman influence, they are unaware that the word given to their famous and emblematic bastella comes from the Greek, pistella, which for the Byzantines meant a honey and sesame biscuit.

In Turkey, as in the whole of Anatolia, the place of cereals was predominant, as were fruits and vegetables, followed by milk and dairy products.

Bread remains the divine food par excellence, with cereals the basic ingredient of many foods prepared in readiness for winter.

Notably the famous bulgur, or ground wheat, eaten in the form of pilaf, as well as edible pastes, concentrates of fruit and tomatoes, and in brine.

Thus, for thousands of years, the Mediterranean basin has been a crossroads of civilizations which have contributed to the so-called Mediterranean Diet.

The current Mediterranean dietary model is thus the fruit of borrowings, transmission, dissemination and appropriation in space and over time, of varied food practices and products from Asia, India, the Middle East and America, as well as the development of an international market for agricultural products and the growing mobility of populations.

Byzantine Foods

Unlike the Romans and earlier Greeks, Byzantine cookbooks seem to be rare indeed.

In fact, only very tempting references to Byzantine cooking are found hidden in diplomatic reports and biographies of the Imperial family.

We know that the empress Lupincina of the Danube Valley was a cook and that Theodora, wife of Justinian, imported cooks from Persia, India, Syria and the Greek mainland to serve at her court.

In the 10th century Liutprand of Cremona, an ambassador to the Imperial court, made disparaging remarks about refined wine and dishes cooked in oil, although he enjoyed some of the sauces and was impressed by the food at the Imperial table.

He especially liked the roast kid stuffed with garlic, leeks and onions and dressed with garon sauce (probably a variety of the Roman garum, that notorious fermented fish sauce).

What did their food taste like?

We have a number of earlier Greek cookbooks, such as Gastronomia by Archestratus (5th century B.C.), and we know what Greek cooking is like now.

To tie them together we have the work of such scholars as Nicholas Tselementes, who traced back to earlier times such dishes as keftedes (meatballs made with grain), dolmades (grain and/or meat stuffed into vegetables or plant leaves and cooked), moussaka (a layered dish of meat, cheese and pasta or grain), yuvarelakia (meat and/or grain dumplings cooked in broth), and katavia, the Greek version of bouillabaisse.

He also traced back to the ancient Greeks the making of white sauce – using flour and fat to thicken a broth or milk mixture.

Although some of these dishes are now known to the world by Turkish or European name (even the Greeks call white sauce béchamel), their origins are Greek.

We know they have three meals a day —breakfast, midday and supper.

They had many fast days. While the lower classes made do with what they could get, the upper classes were served three courses at their midday and supper meals consisting of hors d’?uvres, a main course of fish or meat and a sweet course.

They even all kinds of meats including pork and numerous types of fowl.

They even large amounts of fish and other seafood.

There were many types of soups and stews and salads were popular.

They liked a variety of cheeses, and fruits were eaten both fresh or cooked.

Fruits included apples, melons, dates, figs, grapes and pomegranates. Almonds, walnuts and pistachios were used in many dishes as well as being eaten by themselves.

The recipes given here were created by taking modern Greek ones, removing or replacing non-period ingredients and attempting to reconstruct cooking methods.

They are the types of dishes that would have been served by the common people or middle classes rather than to the Imperial household.

Culinary practices

Mediterranean cuisine is defined by the presence of fundamental elements which are said to play a more important role than others, reflecting a community of beliefs and practices which transcend religions, languages and even societies.

The olive tree, the emblematic tree on more than one account, traces the boundaries of a frontier of landscapes and lives on either side of which the Mediterranean begins or ends. Above Montelimar, nicknamed Gates of Provence, is the limit of the olive.

The same can be said of cereals, another constituent component of this Mediterranean identity, which ancient authors considered the mark of civilized man, the eater of bread. Lastly, wine completes this ancient model based on the trinity of wheat, the olive and the vine.

Associated with these basic products of Mediterranean folk cuisine which constantly uses cereals, olive oil and wine, symbols of a simple, frugal and sedentary life, are dried and fresh vegetables, fruit, sugar and honey, milk and cheese, meat and fish.

This nutritional base does not merely consist of improving the taste of the food eaten.

The chief role of the transformation of foods is to satisfy the nutritional needs of men by means of specific cooking methods and seasonings.

Open to the influences of foreign civilizations, the Mediterranean cuisine has inevitably been enriched by new products and ingredients and by seasoning and cooking methods borrowed or inherited from foreign peoples.

What remains of all that in today’s Maghreb? How are these foods eaten nowadays?

In what way do modern cooking methods reflect the survival of a recipe from the past?

Eating borghel in Tunisia, Lebanon or Turkey, people thought that they were eating an Arab dish, but in fact they were eating a dish from classical antiquity called alica.

Likewise, the Bedouins of the Maghreb had no idea that making their sauce with that small dried fish sold known as ouzef, they were merely reproducing centuries later the recipe for the garum of the ancients.

By milling barley, first toasted then moistened, the Greeks prepared alphiton which is none other than our barley dch?cha or fr?k or melmouth.

The sweet and sour sauce of the Sfaxian chermoula made from a blend of pepper spices, cumin, vinegar, honey and a sugary fruit is in fact a faithful conservation of the recipe of Apicius jus in pisce elixo, sauce for boiled fish.

Lastly, the Latin pulse is reflected in a’c?da and baz?n, the former made from flour and the other from wheat or barley grain.

This endless list of Greco-Roman survivals should not fail to mention that the word taj?n (a handmade earthenware pot and fried dish) comes from the Greek word tagynon and that the word for mauve in Greek is malakhi, the famous Tunisian meloukhiyya!

Egypt: traditions and history of food

The writings of Egypt of the Pharaohs influenced all the cultures and beliefs of the region, including in the sphere of food.

Osiris, brother and husband of Isis, was the God of the vine and wheat.

We know, thanks to papyruses, frescoes and bas-reliefs, that the Egyptians knew beer, heneket, seret, and wine (paour, ordinary, nedjem, sweet, shedeh, brandy.

They did not impose the prohibitions found among the Semites (Jews , then Arabs, after their conversion to Islam).

In Antiquity, both drinks had long coexisted in the eastern Mediterranean and later the western basin: the Celts settled in Gaul (c.1100 B.C.) drank cervesia, cerveza in Spanish.

Around 2,500 B.C., the Egypt which the Arabs called Oum el dounia, Mother of the World, invented leavening of bread dough by fermentation.

Molded from barley or wheat, bread remains today a staple food for all Mediterranean people.

The same is true, in the eastern and southern shores of the Mediterranean, for lentils, of which the ancient Egyptians were the chief exporters.

Lentil soup is an Egyptian specialty. Discovered in Sakkara, the tomb of a woman tells us about some of the foods eaten by Egyptians around 3700 B.C.

They include cereal porridge, barley bread, cheese, two sheep’s kidneys and a cooked fish. Molokheya (royal dish) (of which we give the recipe) was adopted by all the countries of the Near East.

We should mention a curious little known fact: in Egypt, the goose appeared before the chicken.

Frescoes from the time of the first Ramses (1314-1235 B.C.) depict them.

One of them, of charming simplicity, shows (already!) it being force fed through a funnel.

It was concluded from this that the Egyptians could make foie gras, which Perigord and Alsace have made their own specialty.

In any case, they knew how to fatten them in the way their descendants like them, who still have no hesitation in comparing a woman to an ouezza (goose) to tell her that she is beautiful.

An Egyptian national dish, foul medammas, slow-cooked broad beans, eaten seasoned with oil by the poor and with butter by the rich, was adopted by neighboring countries, together with falafels (broad bean fritters) whose origin is often, wrongly , attributed to Lebanon.

The circumstances of their appearance corroborates this.

Indeed, they are hardly mentioned in literature before the 20th century and only appear after the occupation of Egypt by the English in 1882.

The Egyptians were inspired, to enhance them, by other types of fried croquettes (fish, meat, vegetable) originating from India and introduced by the British troops who, coming from India, liked them.

Myth or Mediterranean paradox: in Israel, tradition holds that the Jews ate them in the Egypt of the Pharaohs!

A confluence of traditions

To develop a sophisticated culinary system, you first need a sufficient variety of products.

This is true of the Mediterranean, made up of countries with an agricultural tradition and with an endlessly rich social and cultural intermingling.

The Mediterranean cuisine, in its many forms, was also an economic cuisine.

It was economical in terms of quantity, because you prepared only one dish for the whole day.

It was also economical in quality, being predominantly vegetarian, and inventive, because the diet was above all dependent on the vagaries of production.

Invention is not only the child of luxury, but also, and most of all, of need, poverty or the penury which sometimes forced dishes to be reformulated using reduced resources. In reviewing it, one realizes that the culinary practices which are the basis of the Mediterranean food model, reputed to be so typical, so special, are in fact a confluence of all the local traditions.

It uses ancient techniques, adopts some exotic elements and enriches the whole by its greater complexity and subtlety.

A civilization is defined by what it adopts, integrates, assimilates and acclimatises rationally and efficiently.

From this point of view, the Mediterranean has managed very cleverly to absorb foreign influences by accommodating foreign products from central and western Asia and tropical America.

Species, aromatic plants, fruits and vegetables have accompanied the migrations of people and plants.

Each conquest, each wave of immigrants is also the occasion for the integration and assimilation of new products and culinary skills.

The use of certain condiments by these new communities is reflected in their adaptation of their dietary model to the local setting.

It also transmits new usages to local populations and introduces the consumption of previously unknown products.

If this cuisine merited its description as Mediterranean, it was able to impose a common way of transforming the foods, correcting their defects by the art of seasoning and making up for gaps by substituting certain products for others.

As Fernand Braudel writes: A great civilization can equally be recognized by what it sometimes refuses to borrow, by its refusal of certain alignments, by the fact that it makes a choice from what is offered by traders, and which they would often impose if it did not watch out or, more simply, if their temper and appetites were incompatible.

It is now time to consider the place of meat in the Mediterranean cuisine.

Unlike some northern European countries, the Mediterranean countries, while not rejecting it, do not assign absolute importance to meat, since their food identity is perceived rather in terms of cereals and vegetables.

Unlike Europe, reputedly carnivorous since the Middle Ages, the cuisine of the southern Mediterranean was based on an ancestral diet in which meat occupied only a modest place.

What has now become the most important of its attributes, such as grilled chops, roast shoulder of lamb, barbecued whole roast sheep or brochettes, was at that time the exception and thus saved for big occasions.

In the case of meat, too, food production, especially mutton and lamb, did not keep up with the growth of the population and changes in food habits.

Adequate food levels could only be maintained thanks to imports of beef and the rapid increase in poultry production.

Although present in a great many recipes, fresh meat in general did not play an important role and was ultimately only eaten on special feast days.

The repertoire, the sheep reigned supreme, its meat being the most eaten and was throughout more often than not an ingredient of meat-based dishes.

Less appreciated than mutton or lamb, which is more tender, beef, which provided more meat, is nowadays more compatible with a less elaborate cuisine.

In country areas, the pig killed in winter (the killing of the pig is a big event in country life) was eaten throughout the year in various types of cured meat and mainly the lard.

Lamb was part of the Easter meal among Catholics.

Since we are talking about meat, it is worth recalling some facts, especially as butchers belonging to the three monotheist religions coexist in the great markets of the European capitals.

Thus, in the Jewish food rite, not all meats can be eaten, just as it is forbidden to eat the blood which is considered as the life force.

Animals which may be eaten include ruminant mammals, birds excluding raptors, fish with scales and fins, which distinguishes them from molluscs and amphibians which it is forbidden to eat.

The slaughter is ritual and must therefore respect certain obligations.

There are kosher products whose ingredients and manufacture conform to the principles of the Jewish religion which involves a series of checks by religious authorities.

For Christians, the New Testament abolished Hebrew prohibitions thereby abolishing all food prohibitions.

It simply calls to beware the pleasures of the flesh and avoid gluttony and greed.

Finally, in Islam, there are several food prohibitions: eating creatures which had died, blood, pork and anything slaughtered without doing so in the name of Allah.

Animals must be slaughtered according to a prescribed ritual for their flesh to become halal. Wine is also forbidden, as is also an intoxicating drink of any kind.

In the context of the Arab-Muslim city, food prohibitions were not so strictly defined, at least between Jews and Muslims.

Kosher food, for example, was perfectly lawful for Muslims.

Indeed, a popular saying recommends: ?sleep in a Christian bed but eat Jewish food, since for Muslims, slaughter according to the Christian custom is not halal.

On the other hand, meat may be eaten when the slaughter is carried out according to the Jewish rite, which requires the animal to be killed without suffering, under strict physical conditions and according to learned religious observances.

Chicken, meanwhile, was for a long time a luxury meat reserved for solemn occasions and part of the menu on feast days.

The use of poultry was rare and chicken was considered a dietary supplement to enhance the gastronomic status of stock rather than ordinary food.

Fish, an essential element of the Mediterranean Diet, while never ceasing to be a fairly luxury product, is generally much eaten in coastal towns.

Mediterranean people have a wide range of fish and shellfish (blue fish, bass, mullet, red mullet and sea bream are the most prized).

As to the various methods of preparation, they are often the same, originating from or the fruit of practices handed down by the foreign communities settled along the coasts.

In Tunisia, for example, you can find Portuguese and Spanish survivals in the consumption of bacalao or salt cod.

It was probably the Portuguese who introduced the cod into Tunisia, as shown by the adoption of the Arab name baqalaw.

It is now mainly consumed in a porridge, chiefly in Sfax, on the feast of A?d el Kebir, to accompany a sweet and sour dish, the ritual charmoula.

The towns of the interior tended rather to eat a mollusc dried in the sun and salted, called ouzef.

Among Catholics, fish is the fasting food on Fridays and in Lent.

In the South of France, dried cod was eaten, accompanied by garlic mayonnaise.

Another prestige product eaten throughout the Mediterranean is mullet roes dried and salted called poutargue, cut into fine slices or grated.

The dislike of sman (clarified butter, similar to ghee) in favor of fresh butter, deprives certain dishes such as couscous, lamb risotto and roast meat of an essential complement.

Liyya, Barbary sheep fat, equivalent to lard in Europe, is used in all grilled dishes and merguez sausages, the stuffing of andouillette and in making salted cakes and dumplings.

Coffee and tea

Modern times were above all the great era of colonial drinks: chocolate, coffee, tea were introduced into the dietary regime and were a crucial factor in long-distance trade and in the rivalry between the imperial powers of the time.

Originally from Ethiopia and Yemen, coffee first conquered Venice in 1570, then Italy, reaching Marseille in 1644, then on to Paris where it spread during the second half of the century.

It was a new drink which would come to be an essential component of global big business.

From the end of the 16th century to the beginning of the 18th, coffee found its way from the East to the Regency of Tunis and Algiers.

It was the Ottomans who promoted the integration of this blackish concoction into the customs of the Arabs.

Thanks to the spread of the drink and the building of coffee-houses in the towns of the Maghreb and the East, the Turks stamped their mark on domestic and urban life, even in the names of utensils.

This drug, which fortunately made up for the absence of alcoholic drinks in the Islamic countries, encountered no resistance from the Sunni theologians, as was the case in the East, and rapidly became a great success.

After Europe, Turkey did not long remain the exclusive domain of coffee.

Arriving from central Asia, tea entered Turkey. During the 19th century, tea became the essential drink of the Muslim populations of North Africa, far surpassing coffee, with two centers of dissemination: Libya, the domain of black tea, and Morocco, domain of green tea where English merchants played an important role in its acceptance by the population.

The diet of Tunisian Jews

While the Jewish contribution to the development of Medieval Arab literature, grammar, theology and philosophy needs no further introduction, their contribution to the cuisine is nowadays less obvious to modern generations who are unaware of the importance of the Jewish community in society.

In cosmopolitan cities such as Cairo, Alexandria, Casablanca, Istanbul or Tunis, the coexistence of Jewish, Christian and Muslim communities was not always as exemplary as one was led to believe, but among the ordinary people good neighborhood was the rule.

Without going so far as to talk of assimilation, nothing in everyday life separated a Muslim Tunisian from a Tunisian Jew, an Egyptian Muslim from an Egyptian Copt: the language was the same, as were customs and sensitivities.

Their culinary preferences were identical.

The diet of the Jews also had to obey the prescriptions of the Mosaic religion concerning the method of preparation and cooking of all food including wine.

Hebrew religious festivals were also the occasion for feasting.

The Sabbath day of rest was the most important.

The main dish on the Sabbath is the tfina (from adafina, which means something hot or Jewish soup).

In Tunisia, if you exclude the Kosher character from the food, the daily menu of the Jews is not very different from that of the Muslims.

Culinary practices are mutually influenced to the point where they merge.

While marked by differences in ritual terms, in which each community expresses its religious identity, food remained a strong sign of coexistence, a place of convergence and syncretism formed by intensive daily exchanges.

In the domain of fermented drinks, the Jews produced boukha, a national liqueur which is the aperitif of choice.

It is the product of the distillation of figs and raisins.

The use of this brandy is very common among Tunisian Jews and no family celebration is complete without this vital complement.

Boukha is drunk without water served with boiled broad beans of chick peas; fried whiting, cod, gray or red mullet; salad with vinegar dressing or bitter oranges, boiled artichokes, biscuits, olives, hard-boiled eggs, peppers, dried or fresh fruits, jams.

Conclusion

For centuries, for the majority of Mediterranean peoples, food was a vital necessity and the cuisine reflected the poverty and uniformity.

You ate primarily to satisfy your hunger and so much the better if, exceptionally, you could enjoy what you were eating.

The extremely poor country folk all supplied the same soup.

No trace of a cuisine in these formless soups among the nomads.

You lived off the riches or poverty of the land, and the dishes could only be based on the seasonal products which depended on the locality and the climate.

In short, quite the opposite, or almost, of the situation today, where abundance predominates and varieties of products are often available.

The famous dictum of the French gastronomist Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, at the beginning of the 19th century, Tell me what you eat, and I will tell you who you are has been profoundly shaken in this era of globalization.

For modern food, which lacks authenticity, is no longer identifiable, and for that very reason becomes a problem of identity for the consumer of the product who, not knowing what he is eating, suddenly does not know who he is.

Yet, despite the upheavals caused by the revolution in wholesale distribution, the extreme variety of products on the market today and the difficulty of tracing their origin, Mediterranean people remain strongly attached to their culinary inheritance and its importance, if not in reality, at least in the collective imagination, thanks to the close links which food practices have always woven with their history.