Food crops in ancient greek cuisine

In this study the reader will discover plant-based dishes of ancient Greece as revealed by ancient texts and archaeobotanical remains of cereals, pulses and plants with oil-rich seeds retrieved from archaeological sites.

The book explores plant food ingredients from cultivated fields in their culinary transformation in ancient Greek cuisine from the 7th to the 1st millennium BC. Plant food ingredients, the ways they were processed and consumed as well as variation accross space and time are investigated. The book reveals an impressive variety in the ways raw ingredients from ancient fields were transformed into meals. This journey to the plant foods of ancient Greece tracks the ancient roots of several traditional foodstuffs of modern Greek cuisine and its neighbouring regions.

The book Food Crops in Ancient Greek Cuisine: an archaeobotanical and textual study is the first to be published in the context of project PlantCult, funded by the European Research Council (ERC).

"The present volume approaches the material from archaeological and textual evidence of strikingly defferent periods... This striking approach works well... Galen quotes Aristophanes' list of seven plants and preparations, all of which are discussed in detail in this fine volume".

John Wilkins