The Byzantine Empire was seated in between worlds. It was a unity of ancient Greek and Roman thought, law and even food. As much as the Romans adopted from the ancient Greeks of the past now they were going to combine and mix with one another even more.
The Empire was a continuation of Rome but Greek speaking and although it kept many of the Roman Empire’s structure it was mainly focused on the Greek culture it was surrounded by. The East was already Hellenized and already mostly built from Alexander the Great’s conquest so naturally it was faster and easier for the Eastern Roman Empire to establish itself here after Rome fell. This was a different world then the one we think of today. In these times Asia Minor, the Black Sea and Egypt resembled southern Europe more than today’s Middle Eastern look and feel.
The food started out being a fusion of Roman and Greek and grew from there due to the expansion of the empire and its location between two worlds. Because it was sitting on this trade rout many new items came into the empire and the cooks experimented and explored with these ingredients creating a somewhat new cuisine.
Many codices with these new Byzantine recipes have been lost but if you look at the cuisine of Greece, the rest of the Balkans and western Turkey you’ll see a lot of similarities. Because we have very little text remaining on Byzantine food and because many cultures were part of Byzantium it is very difficult to pinpoint where some dishes actually originated from. You would think the name of the dish would give it away but that is just as deceptive. Some dishes might have originally been Greek for example that were also adopted by the surrounding Middle Eastern cultures which now bare a Middle Eastern name and therefore thought of as Middle Eastern dishes and vice versa. Other writings tell us of a dish in antiquity that was Greek and later adopted by the Romans and eventually evolved throughout the years into a very different dish for the Romans and a different dish for the Greeks. It can get quite confusing.
Byzantium created its own dishes as well as adopting dishes from all parts of the empire and this practice continued even with the Ottoman invasion. They brought all the chefs from all parts of their empire to create a new Turkish cuisine.
Newcomers to the empire as well as the people who surrounded it wanted to be part of it. Education was given to both men and women and it wasn’t unusual for women to be wealthy. All this as Europe was stuck in the dark ages. Byzantium, as many problems as it had was still a beacon of light to the rest of the world. Many cultures strived to become like Byzantium or take its place like Russia and the Ottomans for example.
Russia was called “Third Rome” and its leaders were called Tsars (the Russian version of the name Caesar) as a way to show they were rightfully the “Third Rome”. Many other countries were in line trying to gain that title and the admiration and power of what was first the Roman Empire and then Byzantium. Bulgarians, Germans, Russians and Turks are just some who wished to hold that title but always right in the middle of all this were the Greeks who always were able to influence them all with their knowledge and history. First classical Greece with all its mathematicians, philosophers, inventors, doctors, etc… spread that to the east with Alexander the Greats campaign and west as the Romans were heavily influenced by their neighbors. As Rome grew and took over Greece even more Greek influence made Romans adopt, copy and improve on the Greek culture they occupied. This continued on into Byzantium after Rome fell as we see the Greek lands and the Hellenized non-Greek lands again capture the attention of its rulers.
The Turks actually took over the land that was Byzantium and Mehmed II was the first to call himself Kiser of Rum meaning Caesar of Rome thinking they were rightfully in line for the title. Mehmed II adopted many Byzantine traditions in his court and in his dress for the reason of being the actual continuation of the Empire but the Greeks and some Romans with the knowledge of the empire and the ancients left and brought that knowledge to Italy and France creating the Renaissance and the continuation of Greek ideas into the Western World. In fact our system of laws, city codes, hospitals and more owe their origins to the Greco-Roman culture of Byzantium. About ninety percent of the classical Greek writings were forgotten and lost in the west until they returned with the Greeks during the Ottoman invasion. Without Byzantium and without the Ottoman invasion that sent the people with the knowledge of the ancients the western world might not be as it is today.
The newcomers to the north, the Slavs, also brought in some of their own food traditions and culture but they were also heavily influenced by the Empire and the areas they settled in. We see the influence through the religion of Slavs today as well as the general Balkan cuisine. The Slavs are Catholic, Orthodox or Muslim today due to the influence of Byzantium and the later invasion of the Turks.
Like almost all empires Byzantium had multiple cultures in it and we see this in the food today. Taking a bite of a specific Balkan, Greek, Turkish, Persian or Italian dish that has some type of connection to Byzantium carries a whole lot of history with it.
Greece today as far as architecture and food is different in the east, west, north and south with the more evident examples in the Venetian influenced western Ionian Islands and east Thrace as well as Macedonia having many Constantinopolitan and Pontian influences. It’s a truly east meets west kind of country. Croatia has a heavy Italian cuisine being so close to it and Bosnia feels almost Turkish yet all are quite unique from one another. Sausage was known by the ancient Greeks and Romans as well as other surrounding peoples but during Byzantine times it flourished and many peoples today have a version of their own.
Pastrami although a different preparation here in the states, which is more of a Romanian recipe, has been produced during Byzantine times by many people especially those who were under the Ottoman Empire.
Coffee which is an Ethiopian discovery made its way to Yemen, Persia and Constantinople. From there it reached Italy and Austria through Turkish, Greek, Jewish and Armenian traders of the Ottoman Empire.
The final evolution of the food of the area was obviously with the Turkish invasion. We see the Sultans just like the Emperors of Byzantium being ethnically diverse, many born to Greek and Balkan mothers. As the awakening of the people occurred and nationalism started growing 400 years of no boarders presented a problem since people lived throughout the Empire.
By now some people have mixed and not only through marriage. If you were Albanian for example and the local priest was Bulgarian you or your children might end up only speaking Bulgarian which later meant you ended up living in Bulgaria after the defining of the boarders. Schools weren’t allowed so education happened in the church and in secret so you took what you could get. If you lived on a part of land that wasn’t historically your peoples you ended up being part of that country regardless of your background. Albanians claim to be Illyrian therefore many of today’s Slavic countries are on land that used to be Illyrian and therefore they feel they have a right to be in those countries. This was the start of even more conflict as all the different peoples tried to establish their own homelands.
The religion you chose to be was also a factor as nationalism went hand in hand with the religion you were. At first anyone who was Orthodox was considered Greek for the most part. Muslims were thought of as Turks and we see that with the Girit also known as Greek Muslims. These were Greeks from Crete who converted so they can be considered first class citizens as people who were anything other than Muslim were considered second class citizens. Second class citizens risked getting bad treatment and were subject to vandalism with risk of the local authorities looking the other way.
Even though Cretans were never the religious type compared to the rest of the Greeks this was very bad for them during a time when religion defined you. Even the fact that they were the last to convert to Christianity wasn’t enough to let the Greeks consider them their own. The Greeks felt as if they were betrayed and so did the Muslim Cretans. After the swapping of populations the Cretan Muslims were sent off to Turkey mainly living in Asia Minor as well as other parts of the Middle East.
Today there are believed to be somewhere around 300,000 Cretans living in Asia Minor. Some might have been Turks originally as well as other ethnicities that were living on the island but the main chunk of the Girit was Greek. If you ask a Girit you will see that they feel betrayed by both the Greeks and the Turks alike. Today Girit cuisine is loved by Turks and we see that with several popular restaurants in Islanbul and Asia Minor. Cretan cuisine in Greece is among Europe’s healthiest and Crete supplies mainland Greece with its superb and unique produce.
In the mostly Slavic speaking Balkans we see the Austrian and Hungarian cuisine also being a significant influence. The common Yugoslavian influence as well as the Byzantine and Ottoman is what makes the region similar. Veriety exists due to the contact the Slavs had when settling in the Balkans and the people that were living on the land and the boarder. We find differences on coastal or mountain areas and between East and West. Obviously the cuisines in some areas like towns, islands and regions kept developing on their own making the development of some unique local dishes.
Some of the dishes of these countries are getting a modern twist and some dishes that arrived in America have changed a little and continue to change. A Miami Greek fast food restaurant prepares its Greek traditional recipes with a spicy twist to cater to its Latin customers. In Chicago saganaki was flambéed and a fast food restaurant in Lincoln Park has taken Slavic sausages and grilled meats and made them into modern sandwiches and burgers with condiments like Ajvar and Tzatziki.
There is new movement in Balkan and Greek cuisine here in the states as well as in the Mediterranean cuisine which includes Turkish, Egyptian, Israeli and Greek and this new movement is just getting started.
Next time you take a bite of something from this region, know that food is not only nourishment but a story of a region told to your taste buds.
