Byzantine cuisine

Historical regional cuisine

Byzantine cuisine was the continuation of local ancient Greek cuisine, ancient Roman cuisine and Mediterranean cuisine. Byzantine trading with foreigners brought in grains, sugar, livestock, fruits, vegetables and spices that would otherwise be limited to specific geographical climates. Cooks experimented with new combinations of food, creating two styles in the process. These were the eastern (Asia Minor and the eastern Aegean), consisting of Byzantine cuisine supplemented by trade items, and a leaner style primarily based on local Greek cuisine culture.

Byzantine food consumption varied by class, location and time period. The Imperial Palace was a metropolis of spices and exotic recipes; guests were entertained with fruits, honey cakes and syrupy sweetmeats. Ordinary people ate more conservatively. Thanks to the location of Constantinople between popular trade routes, Byzantine cuisine was augmented by cultural influences from several locales—such as Lombard Italy, the Sassanid Empire, and an emerging Muslim caliphate. The resulting melting pot continued during Ottoman times and therefore modern Turkish cuisine, Greek cuisine and Balkan cuisine have many similarities, and use a very wide range of ingredients. The Byzantines produced various cheeses, including anthotiro, kefalotyri and Feta. They also relished shellfish and fish, both fresh and salt water. They prepared eggs to make famous omelettes — called sphoungata, i. e. "spongy" — mentioned by Theodore Prodromos. Every household also kept a supply of poultry. The Florentine chronicler Giovanni de Pigli reported variously prepared types of chicken, pigeons, salad, and eggs being served to the Emperor John VIII Palaiologos during his visit to Florence in 1439. During the Middle Byzantine period, it seems that meat consumption increased while bread consumption decreased. Byzantine citizens obtained other kinds of meat by hunting animals like deer and wild boar, a favourite and distinguished occupation of men. They usually hunted with dogs and hawks, though sometimes employed trapping, netting, and bird liming. Larger animals were a more expensive and rare food. Citizens slaughtered pigs at the beginning of winter and provided their families with sausages, salt pork, and lard for the year. Only upper middle and higher Byzantines could afford lamb. They seldom ate beef, as they used cattle to cultivate the fields. Middle and lower class citizens in cities such as Constantinople and Thessaloniki consumed the offerings of the taverna. The most common form of cooking was boiling, a tendency which sparked a derisive Byzantine maxim—The lazy cook prepares everything by boiling. Garos fermented fish sauce in all its varieties was especially favored as a condiment along with the umami flavoring murri, a fermented barley sauce, which was similar to the modern umami flavoring, the fermented soy product soy sauce. Liutprand of Cremona, the ambassador to Constantinople from Otto I, described being served food covered in an "exceedingly bad fish liquor," a reference to garos.

The two main grains in Byzantine Anatolia were wheat and barley. Poorer households would also boil the heads and feet of animals.

Honey was used as the main sweetener. Both variants descended from the ancient Greek Placenta cake.

Macedonia was renowned for its wines, served for upper class Byzantines. During the crusades and after, Western Europeans valued costly Byzantine wines. The most famous example is the still extant Commandaria wine from Cyprus served at the wedding of King Richard the Lionheart. Other renowned varieties were Cretan wines from muscat grapes, Romania or Rumney (exported from Methoni in the western Peloponnese), and Malvasia or Malmsey (likely exported from Monemvasia). Retsina, wine flavored with pine resin, was also drunk, as it still is in Greece today, producing similar reactions from unfamiliar visitors, "To add to our calamity the Greek wine, on account of being mixed with pitch, resin, and plaster was to us undrinkable," complained Liutprand of Cremona, who was the ambassador sent to Constantinople in 968 by the German Holy Roman Emperor Otto I.

While Byzantine pottery found at excavations in Boeotia was decorated with innovative techniques and designs that combined elements from local culture and Islamic art, the shape and function of tablewares remained simple jugs were uncommon, and the wide, shallow bowls and dishes were too porous to use as drinking vessels or for watery soups or stews. The personal table fork is suspected to have been invented in the Byzantine Empire where they were commonly used by the 4th century. By the 13th century, the previous style of dishes was replaced by bowls that were deeper and narrower, suitable as vessels for liquids, stews or beverages. Stylized and geometric floral patterns became more common than the animal and human figures of earlier tableware and the quality of lead glaze was dramatically improved over the coarse and non durable, soft tableware of previous centuries. The extent to which changes in tableware were a result of changes in the style of foods consumed in Boetia is a matter of further study. Because written sources are lacking, scholars have taken into consideration the visual evidence depicted on pottery, medieval icons, and Ottoman miniatures, noting differences in the dining culture represented on 11th and 14th century Byzantine frescoes and miniatures. The fresco of the Last Supper at the crypt of Hosios Loukas shows a single large communal plate at the center of the table, with two communal cups, one on either side of the plate. Jesus and the twelve apostles presumably ate with their hands, as no forks or other utensils are shown. Some scholars believe the dishes in the fresco may be symbolic rather than representations of historical dining habits. Fish are shown in the plate, but research on early Christian culture has not found evidence of a Fish Eucharist. A similar pattern of a large communal plate with two communal cups is depicted in 11th century miniatures, one from a Byzantine manuscript (now in Paris) that shows The feast of Herod and Jesus sitting in the house of Simon the leper, and another showing several diners reaching into the communal plate with their hands. The Last Supper fresco at the Dochiariou monastery of Mount Athos from the 14th century depicts food served in multiple bowls, with wine jugs, and beakers, individual bread rolls, and shared dishes and knives. There is archaeological evidence supporting the assertions that knives were used as culinary utensils at in 14th century from excavations of medieval Panakton. Based on studies of middle and lower class household goods, Nikolaos Oikonomides concluded that the average Byzantine household "often, if not always, ate with their fingers from a large serving plate and drank from a common cup or jar (made of clay).