Sicilian Cooks for Rich Greeks

Photo of a plate of figs recovered from an Egyptian tomb, from The Joy of Eating

It was in the fifth century that fine cooking came to Athens from Sicily along with Sicilian cooks, who were all men. Few Greeks were rich enough to afford a chef of their own and most people just hired them for special occasions. Good chefs were choosy and many wanted to see a list of the guests before accepting an engagement. These Sicilian cooks had their own cook-books, but none of them have survived. The accounts of feasts and entertainments in Athenaeus’ “The Deinosophists”give us a good idea of what was eaten, though only a rough idea of how it was prepared, sometimes no more than ‘I took a widowed amia and plunged it like a living torch in the embers’ which is poetry, but no recipe. Good quality and simplicity seem to have been the main characteristics, plus those qualities that come from slow cooking. When the Greek cook needed quick extra heat he would pour a little oil on the fire. — From The Joy of Eating, by Katie Stewart, 1977

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