Ancient Greek cuisine

Ancient Greek cuisine was characterized by its frugality for most, reflecting agricultural hardship, but a great diversity of ingredients was known, and wealthy Greeks were known to celebrate with elaborate meals and feasts.[1]: 95(129c) 

The cuisine was founded on the "Mediterranean triad" of cereals, olives, and grapes,[2] which had many uses and great commercial value, but other ingredients were as important, if not more so, to the average diet: most notably legumes. Research suggests that the agricultural system of ancient Greece could not have succeeded without the cultivation of legumes.[3]

Modern knowledge of ancient Greek cuisine and eating habits is derived from textual, archeological, and artistic evidence.

  1. ^ "LacusCurtius - Athenaeus — Deipnosophistae, Book IV.128A‑138B". penelope.uchicago.edu.
  2. ^ The expression originates in Sir Colin Renfrew's The Emergence of Civilisation: The Cyclades and the Aegean in The Third Millennium BC, 1972, p.280.
  3. ^ Flint-Hamilton 1999