The World That Was - Aristophanes' Lentil Soup ("Fakes")

Hello and Welcome to The World That Was!

This week, I made a dish recorded by the Greek playwriter Aristophanes - a simple brown lentil and leek soup! This is an easy and very versatile recipe, and even has parallels with a modern Greek dish!

In any case, let's take a look at The World That Was!

Ingredients:

1 leek

1 onion

1 garlic clove

1 stick celery

1 carrot

1 parsnip

1 cup / 250g lentils (preferably brown lentils)

750ml water (or stock)

1 1/2 tablespoons vinegar (preferably red wine vinegar)

rosemary

bay leaves

olive oil

salt

pepper

Method:

1 - Chop the Leek and Onion, and Prep the Pot

First, pour some olive oil into a pot. Place this over a medium-high heat while you prepare your other ingredients!

Slice your leek into rings, each one about as wide as your finger. Then, chop your onion in half, and then into thin little crescents. Toss your leek and onion into your pot when the olive oil starts to shimmer. Next, go crush a clove of garlic into it all.

Add a little salt and pepper, before putting the pot back onto a medium-high heat for about 5 minutes. Stir this occasionally to prevent things burning or sticking to the bottom of your pot

2 - Chop Root Vegetables and Celery

Cut your celery stalk into small pieces, each one about as big as your thumb. Then, go peel and chop your carrots and parsnips too. As usual, I'm using a mix of carrots and parsnips, because the ancient Greeks didn't seem to differentiate between them all that much. Plus they work well together in soups like these.

3 - Combine Ingredients and Rinse Lentils

When your leeks and onions look like this, go add your chopped vegetables. Put this over a medium-high heat for another 5 minutes. While these are cooking, go rinse your lentils until the water runs clear. This is just to remove any dust from them before you eat them.

After 5 minutes, go toss your clean lentils into the pot, along with 750ml of water - or a stock of your choice. Stir everything together, before adding dried rosemary and bay leaves to it. These two herbs have been frequently used in the Mediterranean, based on contemporary Greek and Roman records. Pour a tablespoon of vinegar into the pot too. Red or White Wine vinegar would work best for this, but cider vinegar would work in a pinch. Don’t add more than a tablespoon and a half, because this can overpower your soup!

Put your pot back onto a high heat until the pot hits a boil. When it reaches a rolling boil, turn down the heat to low until it simmers. Leave this all simmering away for about 25-30 minutes. If your soup is looking a little dry, add a little bit of water to it.

4 - Serve Up

Your soup should be done when it looks like this! Garnish with a grand total of 12 whole coriander seeds, as suggested by Aristophanes, who may have been being sarcastic when recording this - as amounts of ingredients in archaic Greek cooking is never so accurate. Serve up as is, and dig in!

The finished dish is filling, and the addition of vinegar gives the whole thing a somewhat meaty flavour. As lentil-based soups were held in high regard in ancient Greece - Aristophanes even defends the lentil as a delicacy - there’s no wonder that this dish has modern parallels within Greek culinary traditions - a dish called “fakes” is made in Greece today, with the addition of tomatoes to the base to round out the flavour profiles. However tomatoes weren't native to Europe, and were introduced in the 16th to 17th centuries as a result of colonialism in the Americas.