What Our Fathers Ate

Food, more than a means of survival, brings peoples together in community, creating a sense of family and brotherhood with its wealth of colour, flavour and culture.

One could even say that food is one of the pillars of nationalism. Food has also served as culinary art, as passion and as profession.

The way food is prepared, we believe, has not changed much since the time when man lived in caves and roasted meat on the fire.

What we call today 'türlü with meat' was made more than 8,000 years ago. We see it in the story of the wedding of Isaac our father with Rebecca. The lentil dish has been known for more than 2,000 years.

We have recipes from the Roman period that speak of fish dishes or stewed lamb. Food made with dough stuffed with vegetables was made more than 4,000 years ago. Not to mention bread, known since humanity began.

Cheese has been eaten since man began drinking milk. Making different dishes and even sweets with cheese was already known more than 5,000 years ago. Archaeologists think the oldest cheese sweets known come from the island of Samos, just opposite Kuşadası. This sweet was given to the athletes who ran in the first Olympiad, held in 776 before our era.

In the book of Athenaeus, written in the year 230, we also find a recipe for a cheese sweet in which egg was added to puréed cheese.

Rice under the name pilaf comes from Persia, where vegetables, meat or fish with many aromatic herbs were put beside the rice. Pilaf is eaten a great deal in India, where they called it 'pulaka', meaning 'ball of rice'. Rice is known to have been eaten in China more than 13,000 years ago. From there it passed to India and then to Persia, where the Sanskrit 'pulao' turned into 'pilaf'. In the 7th century of our era they began adding saffron and more aromatic herbs, and today we call this dish 'buryan'. This rice also gave birth to the Spaniards' 'paella'.

Leaving fish in salt and eating it raw was also known long before. The Byzantines called this salted fish 'garum'. Archaeologists found jars full of 'garum' in Pompeii, buried by the eruption of Vesuvius, near Naples.

It seems to me that the name of our tasty 'garato' is very close to the old name 'garum'.

Today the oldest food recipe reaches us from the time of Hammurabi, king of Babylon, who lived 3,750 years ago. On one of the clay tablets we find 40 different recipes. The explanations are in cuneiform.

May we have good health, appetite and good humour to enjoy the tasty dishes of our cuisine.