Of all the ingredients of the ancient world none may be more important
than olives, and that's what we're making today: epityrum,
an ancient Mediterranean olive relish.
And we'll discuss the many uses of this tree and its fruit
in the olive rich civilization of ancient Greece.
Olives, this time on Tasting History.
So today's recipe is called epityrum or olive relish and it was extremely popular in the ancient world.
In Plautus's Miles Gloriosis, or The Braggart, he says
"If anyone ever saw a bigger liar and more colossal braggart than this fellow he can have me for his own
but there's one thing I can say his olive relish makes for insane eating.
Now there are several ancient recipes for epityrum but this one comes from the Roman author
Cato the Elder.
But it's very similar to the way that the ancient Greeks would have eaten it. In fact it was very popular in Sicily
which had a lot of Greek influence.
Epityrum: select some green black and mottled olives and remove the pits.
Chop them up well. Add a dressing of oil, vinegar, coriander, cumin, fennel, rue, and mint.
Cover with oil in an earthenware dish and serve.
Simple but a lot of ingredients and it's the
amount of those ingredients that's going to make my version different from maybe your version or Cato the Elders for that matter.
So while I will give you specific amounts for the ingredients
don't feel like you have to follow them. It's really whatever you want there are no wrong answers here.
But for my version what you'll need is 2 cups or 290 grams of pitted brined olives.
You can use black or Kalamata or green or a mix of everything it's really up to you.
In the ancient world they actually called green olives white olives. I'm still not exactly sure why.
If anyone knows please enlighten me because I could not find a good answer but they were always eaten brined.
Varro says, "If you attempt to eat white olives immediately after you put them up
and before they are cured, your palate will reject them on account of their bitterness.
And the same is true of the black olive, unless you dip them in salt to make them palatable."
So yeah, brined.
A quarter cup or 60 milliliters of olive oil.
2 tablespoons or 30 milliliters of red wine vinegar.
1 tablespoon chopped coriander leaf aka cilantro,
and if you don't like the taste of cilantro, if it tastes like soap to you then you can use the seeds or you can just leave it out.
A half teaspoon of ground cumin one tablespoon chopped fennel leaf.
You can also use the root or the bulb for this recipe the flavor is very similar
but the leaf so rarely gets used and it's nice and delicate so it's kind of perfect for this recipe.
Two teaspoons chopped rue, dried or fresh,
and one tablespoon chopped mint.
So first make sure your olives are pitted. I bought some pitted and I bought some not because clearly I can't read labels,
and getting rid of the pits was- well it was the pits.
Then chop the olives up fine it's really up to you how fine they get.
In another recipe by Columella "De re Rustica", he actually talks about
grinding them more like a like a modern-day tapenade so you could even do that.
Then add the rue, the coriander, the mint, the fennel, and the cumin in a small bowl and pour the vinegar and oil
all over them and mix well.
Then pour that mixture over the olives and then you're pretty much done.
I mean it's super easy. A nice quick recipe today but because there are so many flavors because of all
the different herbs and everything I'm actually going to let mine kind of sit and marinate.
I'm going to let it marinate for a little while so all the flavors can kind of become one and
while they marinate you can hit the Like button and I will tell you a little story about olives.
"And the dove came into him in the evening and low in her mouth was an olive leaf pluckt off:
so no one knew that the waters were abated from off the earth."
And that was the sign that the Biblical flood was over, an olive leaf.
Though sometimes it's translated as olive branch but it's definitely a
dove and I don't see how a dove could carry an olive branch.
It could be carried by an African swallow.
I mean yeah it could be an African swallow but it's not it's it's a dove and that's not the point of this.
Now back to olives. Olives.
Olives have been found all over the ancient Mediterranean
in the tombs of Egyptian pharaohs including an olive wreath in King Tut's tomb
and a fragment from the new kingdom shows King Akhenaten offering an olive branch to the sun god who he worshipped.
Now he could carry an olive branch.
And it's during Akhenaten's reign that we get the first mention of
olives coming from what is now Greece.
The pharaoh was presented with jars of perfumed olive oil
from the king of Mycenae and just like the Masinians it's thought that most of the
cultures around the Greek islands used olives to their benefit. It's thought that the rise of the
Minoan civilization of Crete was due in part to there being a major exporter of olive oil.
In fact there is a tree in the village of Ano Vouves on Crete which is estimated to be between
two and four thousand years old. They can't get a definite age without cutting it down but if
it is that latter that 4,000 years old that olive tree was there during the Minoan civilization but
even if it's only the 2,000 years that's still a really long time especially when you consider
it still produces olives.
But perhaps the most impressive Greek olive tree has to be the one that came from a god.
According to the Athenian legend King Cecrops founded a city-state called
Attica centered on the acropolis rock. Now any respectable city needs a god as its patron
and two gods stepped up for the job:
Poseidon god of the sea and earthquakes,
and Athena goddess of fertility, wisdom, and war.
I've always thought that was a very odd pairing,
fertility, wisdom and war. Like- well it's not a pairing, it's a triad I guess. They don't seem to go together.
So it was decided that whichever god gave the more useful gift to the city
would become the patron god, and the answer is actually cash. Cash is the most useful gift but
neither god went that way. Would have made for a bad story.
Instead Poseidon took his trident and smashed it into the acropolis rock and out came bubbling a spring of water. Unfortunately
it was salt water.
Wow. Thanks.
Now I don't suppose you even need to be the goddess of wisdom to think
of something more useful than a salt water spring for a city that's rather close to the ocean,
but she was the goddess of wisdom and came up with an idea to take her spear stab it into the earth
and out of the hole sprung an olive tree.
Guess who won the contest?
Hint: the place is now called Athens and not Poseidonopolis.
In the 4th century BC Theophrastus father of botany claimed that
Athena's tree was alive and well and still giving off olives.
And half a millennia later in 170 AD
the Greek geographer Pausanias claimed that it was still there. I mean I guess it makes sense the
tree was planted by a god so you know probably lives longer than the average, a
and Herodotus tells a story about when King Xerxes from Persia brought the Persian army into Athens.
Supposedly he had the temple to Athena burned and the next day after a dream he kind of felt bad about it,
and wanted to make amends and so he had some Athenians go up to make sacrifices.
"It happened that the olive tree was burnt by the barbarians with the rest of the sanctuary
but when the Athenians who were ordered to offer sacrifice went up on the very next day,
they saw that a new growth 18 inches long had sprung from the stump."
Like bamboo this tree grew and it needed to because it's said to be the mother tree of many other olive trees in the Athens area,
and there were actually inspectors who every month would go out and check on all of the Athena trees
and make sure that they were still there, and
if one was found uprooted then the person who got the blame was banished
and they came across one of the oddest and kind of coolest writings.
It's a speech from ancient Athens by Lysias who was a speechwriter and it's called
'Defense in the Matter of the Olive Stump.' Essentially he or whoever is reading this is on trial in front of
the Boule, or the 500 people who kind of run the day-to-day of Athenian democracy.
There were 50 from each of the 10 Athenian tribes and one thing that they did was kind of serve as a
jury for some things including if you were accused of ripping up one of these trees.
Now this was written around 400 BC but it kind of reads like a spec script from Law and Order Special Olive Unit.
"Members of the Boule... I was first charged on the indictment of having cut down a sacred olive tree on my land...
They could find no proof against me, so now they charge me for having cut down an old stump.
So, members of the Boule, I think it is my duty to prove that when I bought the place
there was not an olive tree nor stump upon it.
Then he brings in witnesses and uses like logic and historic precedence to
to like fight his case and finishes with a closing argument worthy of Matlock.
"I do not know, members of the Boule, that it is necessary for me to say anything more.
I have shown you that there was not an olive on the place as i have brought witnesses and proof.
You must judge the case, bearing in mind that you should learn from this man why when it was
possible to catch me in the act, he brings the accusation after so long a time,
and why, although bringing no witnesses, he wants you to trust his mere assertions when he could have arrested me in the act."
I rest my case. But even olive trees that weren't related to that original
Athenian olive tree were prized and kept safe and according to Varro it was most important
to keep them away from their mortal enemy. The destroyer of both olive tree and grape vine alike:
goats.
"...for by their nibbling they ruin young plants, especially vines and olives.
But because the goat is the greatest offender in this respect, we have a rule for him.
So it is that goats found among the vines are sacrificed to the Father Bacchus, the discoverer of the vine,
that they should pay the penalty of their evil doing with their lives;
while on the other hand, no goat is ever sacrificed to Minerva, because they are said to make the olive sterile even by licking it,
for their very spittle is poison to the fruit.
For this reason, goats are never driven into the Acropolis of Athens, except once a year for a certain necessary sacrifice,
lest the olive tree, which is said to have its origin there might be touched by a goat."
Touched by a Goat with Della Reese. Does anyone remember Touched by an Angel?
Just me?
I actually never even watched it but I like Della Reese. Anyway, the Greeks. they took their olives really seriously.
And that makes sense because olives are very, very useful. They used them for everything and not just
the fruit though they did eat the fruit, but they also used the wood.
They used it in their ship building because according to them shipworms didn't eat olive wood,
and both the cyclops Polyphemus and Heracles used olive for their clubs.
But while good for scaring off sheep thieves or the occasional bludgeoning, Heracles found that olive wood was no match
against the Nemean Lion.
"I held in one hand my darts and the cloak from my shoulders, folded;
with the other I slung my seasoned club about my ears and smashed it down on his head,
but split the wild-olive, rugged as it was asunder on the invincible brute's maned skull."
But the most famous use of olive wood was to make the wreaths for the Olympic game winners.
According to the second century poet Flegan of Tralis
the first five olympiads had no crown at all but during the sixth King Iphitos asked Apollo
what a good reward for the victors might be.
"Iphitos, do not make the fruit of an apple the prize of this contest,
but on the victor's head set a fruitful wreath of untamed-olive from the tree
now wrapped with fine webs of a spider."
Again cash probably would have been a better prize but when you're in a pinch
go for some cobweb laden olive tree. That- that works too.
The winners of the game actually also got several jars of olive oil which in the ancient world
was basically like winning cash.
In fact Aristotle actually tells us a story of the mathematician and philosopher Thales of Miletus
who got rich off of olive oil.
"He was reproached for his poverty, which was supposed to show that philosophy was of no use. But he knew by his skill in the stars
while it was yet winter, that there would be a great harvest of olives in the coming year;
so, having a little money, he made deposits for the use of all the olive presses in Chios and Miletus,
which he hired at a low price because no one bid against him.
When the harvest-time came, and many wanted them all at once,
he let them out at any rate which he pleased, and made a great deal of money.
Thus he showed the world that philosophers can easily be rich if they like,
but that their ambition is of another sort."
So the Greeks invented democracy and capitalism.
Olive oil was such a prized commodity because it had so many uses in the ancient world.
It could be used for cooking of course, but it could also light oil lamps. It was often the base of perfumes and they
used it to make soap and whether it was Odysseus in The Odyssey or the pharaohs of Egypt, or pretty
much anyone on every other page of the Bible, people were always getting anointed with it.
Which had a religious significance.
Actually in the Bible getting anointed with oil was so important
that it could be used as a punishment going the other way.
"Thou shalt have olive trees through all thy lands,
but thou shalt not anoint thyself with the oil; for thine olives shall drop off prematurely."
Well that's embarrassing. It really was almost like a magical substance.
Hippocrates actually calls it the great healer and uses it in 60 different medicines.
Honestly olive oil is so important and has such a long history just in and of itself that it deserves an entire episode. So
we will leave it there for today ending with ancient Greece pick it up some other time.
I don't- I don't know when but we will, but for today that's it, and let's get back to our olive relish.
So like I said the olive relish is pretty much ready to eat whenever you want,
but in ancient Greece and ancient Rome it would have been served on cheese, so I suggest something
like a feta or something that's not too too strong for this. It should make it a little bit nicer.
Also add some bread in there because you know who doesn't like bread,
and here we are epityrum, ancient olive relish.
So like I said I have the relish but then I also got some cheese and some
bread and everything but I want to try just the relish on its own first and let's see how it is.
It's super salty, like I mean it's brined olives I guess. I guess that's not really
any different from today but it's really nice, and none of the herbs
shoot out. I was really worried that the cumin would just be way too much, but you know
it's there. Everything is there but nothing is overpowering. So my amounts were actually
pretty spot on I think, but let's taste it with a little bit of bread and and cheese as well.
Just falls apart.
How embarrassing.
That's the way to do it. You get a little bit of the creaminess from the cheese.
I mean bread is great but that creaminess from the cheese almost softens the kind of acid
tartness from from the olives and the saltiness and that kind of brine flavor and oddly enough
and maybe it's because I got some bigger pieces I don't know but I can taste the herbs more.
Maybe because it's getting rid of the saltiness you can actually taste the other flavors that are in there.
By the way it's lovely. It's kind of perfect for like a summer
barbecue, or you know whatever like a little appetizer.
Appeteezer as we say here in the States, well we shouldn't say that.
So make sure to follow me on Instagram @ tastinghistorywithmaxmiller and I will see you next time on Tasting History.