History of Greek Food

Who are these women?
Women who grind, singing the monotonous strain:
‘alei, myla, alei…
grind, mill, grind
even Pittacus ground
great Mytilene’s king…” (1)

Woman grinding weat in a basin. Terracotta, ca. 450 BC. From Kameiros, Rhodes.

 
Who are these women who knead…

Tanagra, 500-475 a. C. National Archaeological Museum of Athens, n°27 (Wikimedia commons)
 
make bread…..
 
Female workers making bread and  a flute player [...]

“Ulysses at the court of Alcinous”, Hayez Fr. (1813-5)
“ But without the courtyard, hard by the door, is a great orchard of four acres, and a hedge runs about it on either side. Therein grow trees, tall and luxuriant,  pears and pomegranates and apple-trees with their bright fruit, and sweet figs, and luxuriant olives. Of these [...]

Hard, old bread combined with milk or other liquid (sauce, olive oil, butter, stock, wine etc.) is found for centuries all over Mediterranean as a way of transforming leftovers into a dish in its own right. The ancient Greeks gave the name maza to those bread- based foods; later they were called by various names [...]

A small Italian cookbook which was translated and published by an anonymus Greek doctor in 1828, with the title ‘Cooking, Translated from Italian’, appears to be the first modern printed cookbook in Greece.

Its 181 pages present not Italian cooking per se, but rather a collection of the most well known European dishes (100). Many of [...]

But yesterday I finally opened a bottle of my own hydromeli.

The drink which was called hydromeli (water- honey) by the Greeks and aquamulsum by the Romans is found in many cultures throughout history, and is also known as mead.
It can be regarded as the oldest alcoholic beverage known to man, and the simplest of course.
Hydromeli [...]