Early traces of the world-famous foie gras in the land of ancient Egypt

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by Giorgio Pintzas Monzani

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Criticized by many for its production processes, hated by many for its peculiar flavor, and considered by many to be the most prized and delicious food there is: foie gras, it always brings with it ranks of supporters and opponents to every banquet it comes to.

Associated with French cuisine, and historically linked (mistakenly) to Gallic origins and the opulent eras of kings and palaces, foie gras actually traverses human history back millennia, and finds its origins in the Nile swamps, a land of legends, myths, and fascinating stories.

The reality is that the error in attributing the birth of this dish is made by even the most passionate foodies, as it is a paternity that Egypt has never pushed so hard to claim.

Thus, it remains a common mistake, but one that for the most curious must be analyzed historically.

Why does it originate specifically in Egypt?

How and who subsequently imports it into Europe?

How did it come to be famous within "cuisine francaise"?

The civilization of ancient Egypt, throughout its millennia of history, has always been a nucleus of innovation in every sphere, laying the foundation for the great European and African civilizations that flourished later.

Even from the point of view of food preparation and storage, some of the inventions that occurred on the banks of the Nile are still considered innovative and in our case even progenitors of the world of gourmet cuisine.

As introduced earlier, the process of foie gras preparation was first used by the farmers of ancient Egypt, and more specifically by those in the marshy areas of the Nile delta.

Birth unrelated to the world of food

Why this process was started on the animal in order to obtain a fatter liver still divides some historians today.

In addition to the goal of producing a food that was pleasing to the taste, in fact, the Egyptians used the liver of geese, ducks and other animals to produce the first candles known to man as early as around 3,000 b.c.e. by coating dried reed reeds with animal fat.

As for the food, on the other hand, there is evidence of its preparation dating to around 2,500 b.c.e., this thanks to frescoes found in the necropolis at Memphis.

Of course, there are no dates and certainties related to which practice was first implemented, although it is believed that the use of the candle originated first: thus assuming that after using a fatty liver as fuel to illuminate the dark desert nights, man tasted this extraordinary and original product for the palates of the time.

Pharaonic banquets

We have seen how foie gras originated in Egypt, thanks to the numerous presence of these animals in the paludal areas of the Nile and the craftsmanship of Egyptian artisans, despite which it cannot be described as a food on the tables of all inhabitants.

The labor commitment and cost of preparing foie gras was high from the very beginning, causing it to be presented as a niche product from the very beginning.

So if we could go back in time and conduct a documentary on the food of ancient Egypt, we would not find goose or duck liver pâté in the tables of peasants or merchants, but in the majestic banquets held in the imposing palaces of the pharaohs.

We might, in fact, enjoy ancient foie gras in the company of the priests and nobles of this splendid society.

The journey of foie gras to Europe

After analyzing the birth, the question arises.

How did the food arrive on European soil?

The answer lies behind the journey of the first Greek pharaoh in Egypt's history: Alexander the Great.

As we all know, the Macedonian king arrived on the shores of Egypt during his journey to conquer the then known world.

Alexander's army conquered the land almost peacefully, as the Persian empire (which had ruled the Egyptian lands since 525 b.c.e.) surrendered to the Greek forces, and Philip II's son was welcomed as a liberator, so much so that he was crowned pharaoh in 332 b.c.e.

The globalization brought by the Macedonian empire made cultural exchanges between all the conquered territories even more possible: thus the various culinary customs of the various cultures also came into contact, without collision but leading to the birth and discovery of many ingredients and preparations, including even Egyptian foie gras.

In fact, this increase in food exchange made possible the discovery of the product in the Greek peninsula as well.

The arrival of foie gras in Rome

The fall of the Macedonian empire by the hands of the Roman army, first with its defeat at the Battle of Pydna in 168 B.C. and later with its annexation to the Roman republic in 148 B.C., indelibly marked the history of Europe.

Although Roman policy toward the Greek territories was filled with contempt and exploitation, the empire's intellectuals and wealthy looked upon Hellenic culture with great admiration and respect, which fostered the "Greekization" of many cultural aspects of the then capital of the world.

The Roman poet Quintus Horatius Flaccus in one of his epistles wrote, "Graecia capta ferum victorem cepit," meaning that the crude and fierce conqueror, subdued the Greeks with arms, but the Greeks with letters and art civilized Rome and the whole of the then empire.

The increase then economic and mercantile exchanges between the two territories, now under the same reign, were fortified and increased exponentially.

It can therefore be assumed that the product whose history we are tracing came into close contact with the Roman empire at this time.

Certainly even earlier Rome was aware of the Greek culinary culture, but as mentioned above, goose fatty liver never represented an everyday food, but rather a whim and glitz of the rich in the palace.

And it is precisely during this period that it may have arrived in the empire's market.

A detail that reinforces this theory of ours, lies behind the figure of Marcus Gavius Apicius, the most important gastronome, cook, and writer that antiquity has ever seen.

An almost mythological figure in fact, given the paucity of information about his personal life, according to many a figure to whom cookbooks written by many different authors are credited, a kind of gastronomic deity.

Apicius' foie gras

Marcus Gavius Apicius, at the turn of the first century B.C. and the first century A.D., created real guidelines on feeding birds in order to obtain the best possible foie gras.

Within the collection "De re coquinaria," a bible of gastronomy considered by many to be the greatest gastronomic work in history, Apicius recounts how to sweeten the wild taste of the liver of these birds, it was necessary to feed the animal with figs.

This technique was so revolutionary that it also left an etymological trail behind it; enough to think that the word "ficatum", which means liver in Latin, takes its root from the very fruit that Marcus Gavio used to create his foie gras, the "ficum."

The arrival of the dish in France

As everyone knows, the Roman Empire extended to a great many territories in central Europe, including present-day France, called Gaul at the time.

Thanks to this rule we finally have the arrival of our protagonist in Gallic, French territory.

It was precisely the magnificent technique of the gastronome Apicius that made foie gras the protagonist at all imperial banquets, in every corner of Roman territory.

But how did it become famous in French cuisine in later years?

The reality is that the dish had a dark period after the fall of the Roman Empire, and the use of goose fat was carried on only by European Jewish families.

Until, during the reign of Louis XIV, cooks throughout the kingdom, seeking to impress the king's overweening and vitiated palate resorted to forgotten recipes that would charm royal banquets.

It was at one of the banquets, probably in the palace of Versailles, that a cook decided to prepare foie gras and have the king taste it: delighted by the delicacy and deliciousness of the dish, he declared it the "food of kings," giving it a second life and making it famous throughout the French palaces.

To mention only that in 1778, the governor of Alsace, had his best foie gras tasted by King Louis XVI, who immediately appreciated it, making a gift of 20 gold coins to the court cook: from there, every cook in the French kingdom studied new recipes to astound their sovereigns, making foie gras the most requested dish by the European aristocracy.

Even today the dish is still associated with wealth, power, and splendor; for as we know, history rarely changes.

Why?

Because after all, we are...what we used to eat.

The Evolution of Human Nutrition in Prehistory

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By Giorgio Pintzas Monzani

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By now we always think of food as creation, art, a mix of new ingredients, yet losing the primordial essence of it: surviving.

Man has been able to evolve, travel and discover, having mainly only one motive, nutrition, food.

Of course, the fact that man has not always been interested in gourmet preparations does not mean that they should be of little importance today, at all.

However, there are nuances of prehistoric and ancient nutrition that are still little known to most people today, despite the infinite number of commonalities with our tables today.

Let us start initially by looking at what exactly prehistory is, a detail that often eludes many.

With the Latin term prae-historia, we define all that long period of human existence where the discovery of writing had not yet been made.

The exact subdivision of prehistory is as follows:

●       Paleolithic, which lasted nearly 2 million years and ended about 12,000 years ago

●       Mesolithic, a period between 10,000 and 8,000 years ago

●       Neolithic, the last period of the Stone Age that ended about 4,000 years ago with the invention of writing

The thing that stands out is precisely the long periods of these eras: it may seem obvious but it's not at all, that humans spent more time in prehistory than in history, we were mostly illiterate, which gives a very good idea of how young our race is.

So we will see how starting in the Paleolithic period, man began over the millennia, to develop a more varied and complex diet than his ancestors, albeit at a much slower pace than we might think.

We will certainly not develop the topic solely in the classical scholastic manner, but will also look at dishes from the prehistoric diet that have a direct connection to our tables today.

The Paleolithic, the longest period of prehistory

Speaking of the Paleolithic we mean the longest historical period of prehistory, as well as of human existence.

From the first appearance of homo habilis until the end of the Paleolithic, human nutrition is very limited and characterized by few developments and changes:

Hunting, although considered to be the foundation of his diet, was a very often exhausting and disappointing practice, often dealing with very large prey, thus ending up feeding on carrion and insects, making the human an excellent opportunist rather than a skilled hunter.

In addition, gathering berries and wild fruits was the basis of one's diet, a practice, however, borne by women; in fact, it is thought that it was they who later led to the birth of agriculture: through the seeds that fell on the way back to the villages.

Fishing was also of great importance, but often left on the back burner, dealing with prey that could rarely feed entire groups and families.

The Mesolithic, the first glimmers of true food evolution

With the end of the last ice age, about 10,000 years ago, we see the transition from the Paleolithic to the Mesolithic.

Major climate changes have disruptive effects on the planet's flora and fauna, making it impossible for humans to survive with pre-glaciation habits.

The scarcity of game and large prey prompts humans to embrace a sedentary lifestyle, and to a very different societal organization and their villages.

In fact, the first signs of prey-breeding practices begin, which are no longer killed, but caught and brought back to the villages, creating a kind of prolonged supply over time.

Not unimportant will be the invention of a weapon that will make herd hunting much easier: the bow.

Probably occurring around 6,000 B.C., it helped both in the search for livelihood and in the protection of villages.

The most significant discovery of the Mesolithic was the cultivation of cereals, in the area of the fertile crescent, Mesopotamia, some assume it was the production of wheat that eliminated the primordial need of the nomadic being.

We certainly cannot assume that the type of the first cereals grown had much in common with those consumed today, since over the centuries man modified the nature of cereals in order to make them more digestible to his organism.

Thanks to his own discoveries, the result of centuries of evolution, human beings went from being hunters and an "opportunistic animal" to a true breeder and farmer.

Neolithic, the pinnacle of development of the prehistoric period

Humans of the period by now have little or nothing in common with their Paleolithic ancestors: they created villages with more complex societal structures and more pronounced hierarchies than before; they also made family organization a priority by dividing even their members' possessions differently.

Inventions such as the wheel and the raft are the greatest technological developments of the period, and among the most significant of our existence.

During these millennia, sheep and cattle raising, and agriculture became the most important and widely used form of livelihood, thus decreasing dangerous practices such as hunting, while drastically increasing one's mortality rate.

In addition, man began to realize that having many children was not just a problem of mouths to feed, but a huge resource at the labor level.

Thus, a population increase never before took place, and thus the birth of large villages and much more populated establishments, the ancestors of cities.

But are there types of foods, whether simple nutritional habits or actual processed foods, that we still have, almost, directly in common with prehistoric humans today?

Yes.

So let us look at 3 examples of handed-down, and obviously modified, foods that have come down to us directly from remote periods in our history.

The consumption of insects, a lost custom

In today's Western culture, the consumption of insects, or derivatives of them, is a taboo.

A practice associated with poor quality food and poor hygienic conditions.

However, we forget to consider that this food was the basis of the prehistoric diet, especially of humans in the Paleolithic period: as mentioned earlier, the opportunistic instinct of humans, led them to eat larvae, grasshoppers and any other available and digestible insect.

It is therefore inferred how entomophagy (feeding on insects), is not a practice characteristic of peoples far from us, but present in the DNA of us all.

Obviously this practice was lost when diet and cuisine evolved?

Wrong, we do in fact have written evidence, including Aristotle's work "historia animalium," where the Greek philosopher spends time explaining to the reader the best methods of tasting various kinds of insects.

One example?

Aristotle declares that female larvae after copulation, are delicious, due to the sublime taste given by the eggs contained in it.

Polenta, an age-old dish, imprinted in our DNA

One may think that the oldest grain-based food is bread: however, we forget that in various Indo-European cultures, since ancient times, another cooked grain-based preparation, in the form of porridge, made its appearance.

Whether it was cooking on heated stones, or boiling in pouches from animal remains, human beings soon began eating doughs made from coarse flours and water.

In the case of cooking on hot stones, the first ancestors of bread were born, more specifically products similar to tortillas and Indian naan.

In the case of boiling, on the other hand, centuries before the appearance of terracotta, humans immersed red-hot stones inside containers of water in order to succeed in bringing products to a boil: in this case they added cereal flour to the water, which they cooked for a not-too-long time, until they obtained the first examples of polenta.

The Sumerians were among the first to prepare this dish, where, with flour made from grains such as millet and rye, they obtained a nutrient-rich mush with a huge energy intake.

It was certainly not the latter who extended it to other territories: the ease of its preparation and the need for only two ingredients meant that polenta played an important role for many peoples in different areas.

Nevertheless, it is important to note how it was the Greeks, in the centuries to come, who in turn made it a true substitute for bread and enriched the flavors through spices and savory sauces.

The name polenta came much later, with the Latin peoples: in fact, polenta comes from the word "puls," literally mush.

Jerky beef, not a modern invention

We all have a clear image of those huge shelves in supermarkets, with packages of jerky of all kinds and with all kinds of flavorings.

Well, what if I told you that this is not a product that is a child of modern drying techniques?

The need to obtain meat at times when hunting was difficult, for climatic reasons mainly, led many peoples of the earth to treat meat in a way that increased its durability.

Various archaeologists have found evidence of dried meat in various tombs in the area of ancient Egypt, dating as far back as 3,500 BCE.

Certainly the primordial methods did not always have the effectiveness of today's drying, in fact often the process to which meat was subjected was salting, despite this we see how a food on our shelves today, has roots far back.

Author:

Giorgio Pintzas Monzani is a Greek-Italian chef, writer and consultant who lives in Milan. His Instagram page can be found here.