Tracing Olive Oil History Through Ancient Cuisines

Considered the pre­em­i­nent Jewish food his­to­rian, author Joan Nathan has incor­po­rated more than 40 years of study into her most recent book, King Solomon’s Table: A Culinary Exploration of Jewish Cooking from Around the World.

Nathan begins her crit­i­cally acclaimed book with an overview of Jewish food his­tory, intro­duc­ing read­ers to King Solomon, whose exis­tence is sub­ject to debate. Solomon is con­sid­ered to have led Israel for four decades begin­ning in 970 B.C.E.

As Nathan writes, Solomon’s legacy ​“offers an image of a ruler pre­sid­ing over a diver­sity of cul­tures, an abun­dance of food, and reach­ing beyond his bor­ders to feed his king­dom.”

Solomon exported wheat and olive oil, Nathan writes here in her 11^th book. In an ear­lier book, Nathan writes that olive oil was accepted as a form of pay­ment for taxes in Solomon’s era.

Noting its his­toric use for cook­ing, light, and heat, Nathan said, ​“I’ve always been inter­ested in olives and olive oil because they are bridges between the past and present. They are inte­gral to the ancient food we’re now mak­ing in mod­ern ways.”

Nathan cites the chick­pea pan­cake as an exam­ple. Placing the recipe in its his­tor­i­cal con­text, Nathan notes that Mesopotamians used chick­pea flour since at least 2500 B.C.E. and that migrants brought it to south­ern Europe cen­turies later.

Originating in Nice, Nathan’s socca are chick­pea pan­cakes with fen­nel, onion, and rose­mary. The veg­eta­bles are sautéed in olive oil. Naturally vegan and gluten-free, the chick­pea pan­cake assumes var­i­ous names in the many coun­tries that serve it today.

In her recipe for what she col­lo­qui­ally terms ​“egg­plant bits,” the award-win­ning author embeds a metaphor. The recipe itself is Jewish-style egg­plant with Italian and Georgian influ­ences. To Nathan, the ​“wan­der­ing egg­plant” rep­re­sents her nomadic pro­fes­sion.

“I feel as if egg­plant has been the leit­mo­tif of my culi­nary career,” Nathan writes. ​“Throughout my life of eat­ing in homes and restau­rants around the world and writ­ing about eth­nic foods, egg­plant has always been there, call­ing me to order it from the menu, beg­ging me to request the recipe from the cook.”
Where there’s egg­plant, there’s olive oil. ​“The pair­ing is so nat­ural it’s almost hard to imag­ine an egg­plant dish with­out olive oil,” said Nathan, a fre­quent con­trib­u­tor to The New York Times and Tablet mag­a­zine.

Nathan has been study­ing the link between olive oil and Hanukkah for at least 20 years, argu­ing in 1996 that Hanukkah is ​“as much a cel­e­bra­tion of the olive as it is of the mir­a­cle of the oil that lasted eight days.”

Nathan’s choco­late and olive oil mousse is neu­tral under Jewish dietary laws, mak­ing it a ver­sa­tile dessert for Hanukkah and other hol­i­day meals.

Her scourtins are dairy bis­cuits rooted in his­tory. ​“A scourtin, an ancient press to mash cured olives, is also the name of a very old bis­cuit, now served as an appe­tizer with drinks, a spe­cialty of Nyons, in the south of France, a town that had a Jewish pop­u­la­tion from at least the 13^th cen­tury and where many Jews flee­ing south dur­ing World War II took refuge,” writes Nathan.

The recipe is short­bread cook­ies with olive oil, chopped black olives, and fen­nel.

“The purity of olive oil brings us back full cir­cle to its pop­u­lar­ity through the mil­len­nia,” said Nathan. ​“We know it’s one of the ear­li­est oils, next to coconut and sesame. We went through the time in the 1950s and ​’60s of processed foods, includ­ing oils. Now we’ve returned to appre­ci­ate the ways olive oil is good for our food and our health.”