ATHENAEUS of Naucratis was an ancient Greek rhetorician and grammarian. Yet, in those rare moments when he wasn't orating, proclaiming or most definitely not splitting his infinitives, he wrote 15 volumes of Deipnosophistae, or 'dinner-table philosophers', an epic tale of an epic banquet where conversation covered everything from cooks and recipes through seasonality and sex, to feasts, frivolities, festivities, morality and wine. The books can, as you might imagine, go on somewhat, but these wordy tomes were food writing in its very earliest form. Albeit with a judicious dash of sophistry.
But, when it comes to the art of cooking, the Greeks have been masters for many a millennia. Food plays a central role in Homer's Odyssey, with endless 'hulking sheep' and 'fatted goats' being roasted over open fires, not to mention those lovely lotus flowers, the delectable (but ultimately, deadly) Oxen of the Sun, and, of course, one of the earliest recorded sausages, 'filled with fat and blood'. The Spartans were said to gain their might from the 'black soup' upon which they were raised, a fairly visceral liquid black pudding. Whereas olive oil, 'liquid gold' in Homer's eternal words, is the very lifeblood of Greek food, pressed from the fruit of the sacred tree. 'A taste older than meat, older than wine,' writes Lawrence Durrell in Prospero's Cell.
Esta historia es de la edición March 27, 2024 de Country Life UK.
Comience su prueba gratuita de Magzter GOLD de 7 días para acceder a miles de historias premium seleccionadas y a más de 9,000 revistas y periódicos.
Ya eres suscriptor ? Conectar
Esta historia es de la edición March 27, 2024 de Country Life UK.
Comience su prueba gratuita de Magzter GOLD de 7 días para acceder a miles de historias premium seleccionadas y a más de 9,000 revistas y periódicos.
Ya eres suscriptor? Conectar
Save our family farms
IT Tremains to be seen whether the Government will listen to the more than 20,000 farming people who thronged Whitehall in central London on November 19 to protest against changes to inheritance tax that could destroy countless family farms, but the impact of the good-hearted, sombre crowds was immediate and positive.
A very good dog
THE Spanish Pointer (1766–68) by Stubbs, a landmark painting in that it is the artist’s first depiction of a dog, has only been exhibited once in the 250 years since it was painted.
The great astral sneeze
Aurora Borealis, linked to celestial reindeer, firefoxes and assassinations, is one of Nature's most mesmerising, if fickle displays and has made headlines this year. Harry Pearson finds out why
'What a good boy am I'
We think of them as the stuff of childhood, but nursery rhymes such as Little Jack Horner tell tales of decidedly adult carryings-on, discovers Ian Morton
Forever a chorister
The music-and way of living-of the cabaret performer Kit Hesketh-Harvey was rooted in his upbringing as a cathedral chorister, as his sister, Sarah Sands, discovered after his death
Best of British
In this collection of short (5,000-6,000-word) pen portraits, writes the author, 'I wanted to present a number of \"Great British Commanders\" as individuals; not because I am a devotee of the \"great man, or woman, school of history\", but simply because the task is interesting.' It is, and so are Michael Clarke's choices.
Old habits die hard
Once an antique dealer, always an antique dealer, even well into retirement age, as a crop of interesting sales past and future proves
It takes the biscuit
Biscuit tins, with their whimsical shapes and delightful motifs, spark nostalgic memories of grandmother's sweet tea, but they are a remarkably recent invention. Matthew Dennison pays tribute to the ingenious Victorians who devised them
It's always darkest before the dawn
After witnessing a particularly lacklustre and insipid dawn on a leaden November day, John Lewis-Stempel takes solace in the fleeting appearance of a rare black fox and a kestrel in hot pursuit of a pipistrelle bat
Tarrying in the mulberry shade
On a visit to the Gainsborough Museum in Sudbury, Suffolk, in August, I lost my husband for half an hour and began to get nervous. Fortunately, an attendant had spotted him vanishing under the cloak of the old mulberry tree in the garden.