Invited to dinner in Byzantium? You’d better get ready….

The Byzantines had several meals a day: lunch in the early noon, dinner in the afternoon, and an evening meal, which was the biggest of the day. It would appear that members of the upper classes took additional meals in between, bringing the total number to four a day.
 
Foodstuffs that are popular and important nowadays, like potatoes and tomatoes, were unknown to the Byzantines. They did of course have a great variety of other foods, such as lettuce, cabbage, spinach, onions, garlic, mushrooms, carrots, leeks, radishes, peas, beets, salad rocket, dill, mint and oregano, which the Byzantines grew in their gardens. They also kept vegetables available year round by pickling them in salt and vinegar. As for pulses (lentils, beans, chickpeas, peas, lupin beans), they formed an important part of their diet. In Byzantium they also had an excellent olive oil; the climate favoured the cultivation of olive trees in the largest part of the empire, and the Byzantines exported it to Mediterranean countries (Italy, Palestine, North Africa), and the Balkans.

The Byzantine diet was mainly vegetarian, not only because meat was expensive, but also because there were a lot of fasting periods in the year. Domesticated animals were mainly bred for their dairy products (milks and eggs), not for their meat. Vlach and Cretan cheeses were regarded as fine quality varieties, whereas asvestotyro (white cheese) was of low quality. Lamb, goat, hare, rabbit, chicken and game (red deer, roe deer and wild boar) were among the kinds of meat that the richer ate more frequently. One favourite dish was pork meat, salted or boiled with various vegetables. They would also eat titbits made of offal, resembling foods still eaten in Greece (gardoumpa and kokoretsi, and they even ate frogs.

Fish were often eaten (especially by the clergy and monks), since they were to be had in plenty, especially in areas close to the sea (the tastier fish were found there), lakes and rivers. A lot of fish species were to be had: the large and expensive ones (mullet, bream, sea bass, sea bream and turbot), or the cheaper fish and seafood that were caught more easily and in large quantities (mackerel, sardines, bonito, octopus, squid, cuttlefish, mussels and crabs). They were cooked in many ways: grilled, fried and boiled with various spices and herbs. People also preserved fish all year long by salting them. One very popular sauce was made from small fish and fish offal, which were either boiled or left to ferment in the sun for a period of three months and then blended with salt and old wine. This sauce was called garos, and people loved it so much that they had it with almost everything, including meat!