The World That Was - Ancient Athenian Pancakes (tiganites)

Hello and Welcome to The World That Was

This week, I'm making some archaic Greek tiganites - which were basically very rudimentary pancakes, fried in olive oil. They're still made today, but with ingredients that your average Athenian wouldn't have had access to.

In any case, let's now take a look at The World That Was! Follow along with my YouTube video above!

Ingredients (makes 4 large tiganites)

1 cup flour
1 cup water
salt
honey
olive oil

Method

1 - Prepare the Batter

To begin with, we need to make the batter. It's recorded as being a very thin, liquid batter, so make this by pouring a cup of wholemeal wheat flour into a bowl, followed by a pinch of salt. Whisk this together, if you want. It doesn't really do much here. Then, pour in a cup of water on top of this, followed by a generous pour of olive oil. Ancient Greek cooks would have likely used seawater, instead of dry salt and fresh water. If you want to make these very sweet, you can add a generous squeeze of honey to the batter before you mix it.

Whisk your batter together until it's very smooth, and runs off your mixing utensil easily. Leave this aside for a couple of minutes while you deal with your pan.

2 - Prepare the Pan, and Cook the Cakes

Pour a tablespoon of olive oil onto a frying pan, and put this over a medium-high heat. When the oil is shimmering, ladle in some of your batter, try and spread it out as best you can into a very thin layer. These will cook quickly, around 2 minutes per side. Flip them over and let the other side cook for the same amount of time.

When both sides are done, take them off the pan, and sprinkle some toasted sesame seeds over them, along with some crushed walnuts. Finally, drizzle some more honey over the tops of your tiganites before serving them up warm!

The finished cakes are light yet filling, due to wholemeal flour being used. The mixture of savoury olive oil mixing with the honey really creates a simple but delicious taste profile - which is really amplified by the walnuts used here!

tiganites were first recorded by Athenaeus in the 2nd century AD, but it's likely that these were made and eaten well before then! Given how simple they are to make - being basically flour, water, and oil - it's likely that tiganites are a transformation of a rudimentary Aegean bronze-age recipe to suit changing palettes in the region. Something that we can see in most recipes from antiquity!