The Delicious Legacy

With Jerolyn Morrison

Food archaeologist Jerolyn Morrison has excavated Minoan sites on Crete for almost three decades, in a rerun with bonus ancient recipes and the myths of Labyrinth, Minotaur and Talos.

Homer's Odyssey supplies the frame for exploring feasting, cooking and xenia, the Greek custom of hospitality to strangers, alongside archaeological discoveries from the real Bronze Age Greece behind the epic.

With Flint Dibble

Archaeological scientist Flint Dibble studies people, animals and environment across the ancient Greek world, discussing his publication on the consumption and management of animals at Azoria on Crete and what the archaeological evidence says about food in ancient Greece.

With Stephen Cerone

A personal journey into ancient cooking explores foods and ingredients of Ancient Greece and Rome from 2500 years ago, made together with guest and co-host Stephen Cerone, a keen baker and sourdough enthusiast.

The olive and its oil, liquid gold of the ancient Mediterranean, from the sacred olive tree in the shrine of Erechtheus on the Athenian acropolis, burnt in the Persian sack of 480 BCE, to a 1600 BCE workshop in Cyprus.

Wine stood central to daily and mythical life in ancient Greece, from the battle of the Lapiths and Centaurs at the wedding of Pirithous and Hippodamia to the sacred lore surrounding the gods.

Ancient Spartan society, how it functioned and the role of slavery and the Helots, the origin myths of Sparta, and the infamous black broth soup that supposedly only Spartans loved, how it was made and whether it was tasty.

Food markets of Oxyrhynchos, the city of the sharp-nosed fish, in Hellenistic Egypt: what they sold, who could trade and where in the city they stood, based on the book of Peter Parsons.

With Flint Dibble

Part 2 with archaeologist Dr Flint Dibble goes deeper into the ancient Athenian world: butchering, sacrificial feasts set against home cooking, bones from the Agora, and eating habits up to Athens's hegemony in the Delian League.

Archestratus, a Sicilian Greek from Gela or Syracuse, circumnavigated the ancient Mediterranean chasing his hunger, and what survives of his lost poem Hydipatheia comes only through Athenaeus's Deipnosophistai, composed around AD 200.

Medical writers from Hippocrates to Galen, Oreibasius and Haly Abbas in Islamic Persia all linked diet to a healthy body, carrying the ancient Greek theory of humours forward into medieval European medical schools.

Dan Snow's documentary on Libya and the ancient city of Cyrene inspired a fresh look at silphium, its relationship with asafoetida in Indian cuisine, and what ancient authors say it tasted like.

Part two follows Archestratus on an imaginary trip across the Black and Aegean seas some 2330 years ago, the Daedalus of tasty dishes, whose Gastrology takes that title according to Lycophron in his books on comedy.

Silphium, valuable to ancient Greeks and Romans alike, connects to the prosperous ancient Greek colony of Cyrene in modern Libya, and the long-standing question of whether the plant truly went extinct.

Ancient vegetarianism with Pythagoras as its central figure, the father of mathematics born on Samos around 580 BCE, who travelled through Egypt and Babylon before settling in Croton in Magna Graecia.

The history of sesame seeds and their use in ancient cuisines, especially Greek, from their source in India through Mesopotamia and Egypt to ancient Greek desserts and China, with halva made of tahini and honey.

Oxyrhynchus, a Hellenistic-Egyptian city at the turn from Greek to Roman influence, gave up 280 boxes of papyri after a low mound was dug on 11 January 1897, opening a window onto Hellenistic, Roman and Byzantine Egypt.

Ancient Classical Greece drank Lemnio, Savvatiano, Assyrtiko, Thassian and Chian wines at symposiums, opening the agape festivity with a libation poured onto the sacred family hearth before any guest raised a cup.

The ancient food traditions of Massalia, today Marseilles, where Greeks settled around 600 BCE with wine, grapes, olives and herbs, read through Archestratus and linked to Provençal sartanado and French bouillabaisse.

With Flint Dibble

Archaeologist Dr Flint Dibble researches the foodways of ancient Greece, explaining how animal bones once discarded now inform isotope analysis revealing how daily ancient diets varied from season to season.

With Mariana Kavroulaki

An interview with Greek archaeologist and food historian Mariana Kavroulaki on the food and foodways of Classical Greece, with beer in ancient Greece, Franchthi Cave and garos among the topics of the conversation.

Unknown delicacies of the ancient Greek world surface through Athenaeus and his Deipnosophistai, drawing on texts from the sixth to the fourth century BC that praise local specialities and their prized regional excellence.

Ancient Olympia hosted food, drink and partying alongside the Games themselves, and ancient Olympian athletes used diet and wine in their own attempts to cheat their way toward first place, myths included.

Archestratus of Gela or Syracuse circumnavigated the Med for his hunger, and this final part closes out the surviving Athenaeus quotes from his poem Hydipatheia, found in Deipnosophistai, including a parrotfish recipe.

How much fish the ancient Greeks ate, whether it was popular or expensive, and the surviving recipes, with Plutarch's Moralia on Aedepsus in Euboea, where the sea nourishes a store of delicious fish.

The ancient Greek chef was the first of the genre known today as Celebrity Chef, competitive and innovative amid feuds and gossip, and Mithaecus of Sicily, Europe's oldest cookbook author, left one surviving fish recipe.

Salted, cured ham and bacon ranked above all other cures in ancient dietetics, a theory traced to sixth-century-BC Greek philosophers Anaximenes, Heraclitus and Thales, refined by Hippocrates and later systematised by Galen of Pergamon.

Archestratus of Gela supposedly gave the world the word gastronomy, and this favourite ancient foodie hero left mere whispering echoes from 23 centuries ago, weighed as legend or real, gastronomer, cook, poet or glutton.

Fava beans and peas from the genus Lathyrus have fed the ancient Greek world since time immemorial, cultivated from Neolithic remains through thousands of years on the modern Hellenic table.

Feasting mattered greatly to the ancient Greeks and the wider Aegean societies, and sylphium, a herb popular in the cuisine of ancient Greece and Rome, helped make the Greek colony of Cyrene a rich, powerful democracy.

The first recorded fish sauce came from the ancient Greeks of the Black Sea colonies, and the surviving Greek recipes for it still affirm the distinction between a blood-viscera sauce and one made from whole fish.

Part two follows the trails of frankincense and asks who the Nabataeans were, tracing how frankincense and other spices reached the temples and plates of ancient Egyptians, Greeks and Romans along a route tied to Arabia.

Chios, fifth largest Greek island and reputed birthplace of Homer, is famous for mastiha, which flavours many Greek recipes, gives English the word masticated from the ancient Greek for chewing, and was popular from antiquity till today.

An episode swap with Ancient History Hound tells of the Haloa, an ancient Athenian winter festival honouring the goddess Demeter, held during or around December and January.

A celebratory recipe from the ancient Greco-Roman world bathes lamb or kid goat overnight in milk and honey for a slow roast, cooked with a luxurious sauce of red wine, dates and garum, from Apicius.

With Pavlos Kapralos

Musician Pavlos Kapralos discusses composing music for ancient Greek and Byzantine episodes, exploring how ancient Greek music sounded, which instruments existed, and how Byzantine secular and church music connects to that ancient past.

Episode zero introduces a podcast on ancient food and gastronomy, with recipes and ingredients from Classical Greece and ancient Rome, and promises a whole episode on garum and its lineage down to Thai and Vietnamese cooking.