The Delicious Legacy

A Greek Gourmand, travels through time...Imagine yourself dining with Socrates, Plato, or Pythagoras! What tasty morsels of food accompanied the conversations of these most significant minds in Western philosophy?Now picture yourself as you sat for a symposium with Cicero, or Pliny the Elder or Julius Caesar. The opulent feasts of the decadent Romans!Maybe, you're following Alexander the Great during his military campaigns in Asia for ten years. Conquering the vast Persian empire, while discovering new foods. Or try and picture the richness of fruits and vegetables in the lush Hanging Gardens of Babylon.What foods did our ancestors ate?How did all begin? Who was the first to write a recipe down and why? Sauces, ingredients, ways of cooking. Timeless and continuous yet unique and so alien to us now days. Staple ingredients of the Mediterranean world -as we think now- like tomatoes, potatoes, rice, peppers, didn't exist. What did they eat? We will travel far and wide, reconstructing the diet, the feasts, the dishes of a Greek Philosopher in a symposium in Athens, or a Roman Emperor or as a rich merchant in the last night in Pompeii.....Lavish dinners, exotic spices, so-called "barbaric" traditions of beer and milk, all intertwined...Stay tuned and find out more here, in 'The Delicious Legacy' Podcast!Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/the-delicious-legacy.

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Ancient Greek Music with Pavlos Kapralos

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To Season, To Cure, Το Heal: A Briny History

about 4 hours ago 48m

In the year 1734 three miners were taken aback when they discovered a male body inside Hallstatt salt mine. The body was very well preserved, having been mummified by salt. Accounts of the time say that the dead body, completely embedded into the rock salt deposits, was discovered following a collapse in the Kilbwerk. His shoes and traces of his clothes had been preserved: 'One can even see a bit of cloth on his dress, and the remains of the shoes on his feet'. The mine workers assumed that it was the long-dead body of a miner who had lived before the first official records, that is, more than 400 years earlier, but after thorough analysis and investigation, today’s assumption is that this man was the victim of a mining accident approximately 1000 BCE. The heyday of prehistoric mining was in the late Iron Age between 800 and ca. 400 BCE. At that time, miners would penetrate as much as 200 metres into the mountain, in the Austrian Alps, extracting not gold or precious metals but copious amounts of salt, about half a tonne a day with hand tools, supplying salt to half of Europe 2000 years ago!

Hello!

Today we are busting all the old myths about the salt!

What and how the Romans used it?

What did the Greeks say about it?

Humans, like other mammals, relied on the small amounts of salt naturally present in food to regulate the amount of fluid in the body. Very powerful mechanisms for conserving salt within the body were developed. For 5 million years, our ancestors added no salt to their diet. The addition of salt to food began relatively recently, about 5000 years ago. As people became increasingly addicted to it, salt became the most important object of trade and the economic foundation of several empires. It was used by authoritarian governments to control their people and as the main source of tax revenue.

Join me on another archaeogastronomical adventure!

The Delicious Legacy Podcast

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Naxos, Weeds, Cheese and Patience Gray

Sesame, Halva and Tahini: A Rich Complicated History

Recipe of the week on a Sunday: Two Traditional Onion Recipes

My Grandmother's slow cooked pork & pickled cabbage

Macaroni and Cheese: Origins, Myths and History, from Ancient Rome to Renaissance

Aug 06 58m

Hello!

Brand new episode is out!

I’m talking with food historian Karima Moyer Nocchi. Earlier this year she published a brand new fascinating book titled THE EPIC HISTORY OF MACARONI AND CHEESE: FROM ANCIENT ROME TO MODERN AMERICA by Columbia University Press, which I devoured from start to finish. I was made aware late last year and I could not wait for its publication. So the honour talking with her and the excitement is even bigger than normally guys and girls!

Before we go to the interview with my excellent and erudite guest, let me make an exciting announcement …!

The online Serve it Forth Food History Festival will be returning on Saturday 17th of October 2026. Curated by the guild of food writers members and podcasters, historians, writers and all around hyper talented humans, Sam Bilton, Neil Buttery, Alessandra Pino alongside with me, Thom Ntinas. The festival will explore many different aspects of historical food featuring fascinating discussions and historical cookery demos. Details on the full line up will be coming soon but you can view the summary of the day’s “menu” on our website. https://serveitforthfest.wixsite.com/info/bill-of-fare

Let me just tell you that for our amuse bouche introduction course we have none other than the amazing food historian Eleanor Barnett! I’ll be exploring the diet and lifestyle of ancient olympians and gladiators in the Greek and Roman world with historian Alexandra Sills.

Tickets are available on eventbrite and I’ll put a link below:

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/serve-it-forth-food-history-festival-2026-tickets-1992224789976?aff=ebdsoporgprofile

My recommendations for the week:

Glorious Exploits by Ferdia Lennon – classical tragedy as a Celtic caper

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2024/jan/06/glorious-exploits-by-ferdia-lennon-review-classical-tragedy-as-a-celtic-caper

American farmers slid solar panels over 62,000 acres of farmland, and the biggest payoff had almost nothing to do with electricity.

https://energiesmedia.com/solar-panels-farmland-crops-agrivoltaics/

The English Olive Co, the original english olive oil:

https://www.englisholive.co.uk/.

You can get Karima's book here:

https://cup.columbia.edu/book/the-epic-history-of-macaroni-and-cheese/9780231215312/

More about Karima: