50 Fun Facts About Greek Food

Under EU rules, feta is a sheep's milk cheese that may be blended with a smaller share of which other milk?

Goat: it may make up no more than 30% of the milk, and since the EU protected the name in 2002, the cow's-milk versions long made in Denmark and Germany may not be sold there as feta.

In Greece itself, an authentic gyros is traditionally made with which meat?

Pork is the Greek standard, with chicken the usual alternative; the lamb or ground-beef gyro is what other countries serve, and one American dictionary still defines the dish as 'usually lamb'.

Which Greek street food takes its name from the word for a skewer?

Souvlaki: around Athens the skewer on its own is usually called a kalamaki, 'little reed', while 'souvlaki' there can mean the whole pita wrap.

Which vegetable is mixed with strained yogurt and garlic to make tzatziki?

Cucumber: it is grated and then squeezed dry in a cloth, because any water left in it thins the yogurt and turns the dip runny.

Outside Greece, a 'Greek salad' is often bulked out with which ingredient that a traditional horiatiki leaves out?

Lettuce: horiatiki means 'village salad', a rustic plate of ripe tomato under a slab of feta, the kind of thing a farmer would have had to hand.

Which Greek dish did chef Nikolaos Tselementes give its modern form by adding a béchamel top?

Moussaka: Tselementes crowned the older dish with a French-style béchamel, and his recipe book became so standard that 'tselementes' is now a Greek word for a cookbook.

Besides ground meat, moussaka is usually based on which vegetable?

Aubergine: Greek cooks fry or bake the slices first and build them up in layers, whereas the Turkish dish of the same name braises them with tomato and minced meat.

Pastitsio, the Greek baked pasta dish with a béchamel top, takes its name from a word in which language?

Italian: a pasticcio is a baked pie of mixed ingredients, a hodge-podge, and the same word, passing through French, gave English 'pastiche'.

Spanakopita is a filo pie filled with cheese and which vegetable?

Spinach: spanaki is its Greek name, and cooks wilt it and squeeze out the liquid before it goes between the sheets of filo with feta, eggs and herbs.

The paper-thin pastry filo takes its name from the Greek fyllo, meaning what?

Leaf: the dough is stretched paper-thin and the sheets are stacked with butter or oil between them, so they bake into brittle, flaky layers.

Ouzo is a dry aperitif flavoured with what?

Anise: its oil dissolves in strong alcohol but not in water, which is why clear ouzo turns milky white the moment water or ice goes in.

Retsina owes its distinctive flavour to what?

Pine resin: ancient wine jars were sealed with it to keep the wine from spoiling, one explanation of how the taste caught on; today small pieces are added during fermentation instead.

Metaxa, the amber Greek spirit created in 1888, is a blend of brandy and what?

Muscat wine: it is married with aged wine distillates and a secret mix of botanicals including rose petals, which is why naming rules no longer let Metaxa call itself a brandy.

Tsipouro, the pomace brandy of Thessaly and Epirus, was said to be first made by 14th-century monks where?

Mount Athos: by tradition its monks, already winemakers, first distilled the spirit from what the winepress left behind, the skins and pips of the pressed grapes.

Frappé coffee, the foam-topped iced Nescafé drink, was invented in 1957 in which Greek city?

Thessaloniki: the story goes that at its 1957 trade fair a Nestlé employee, Dimitris Vakondios, couldn't find hot water for his instant coffee, so he shook it with cold water in a shaker.

Which southern Greek city gives its name to a famous dark purple, almond-shaped table olive?

Kalamata: the EU protects the name for olives grown around the city, though the variety itself, Kalamon, is grown across Greece.

Mastic, the aromatic resin used in sweets and liqueur, traditionally comes from which island?

Chios: growers score the bark so the resin weeps out in drops called 'tears', which are left to harden before they are gathered and cleaned.

Despite its name, Greek fava, the yellow puree served as a dip, is made from what?

Split peas: yellow ones are simmered with onion until they collapse into a puree; the prized version, from one volcanic island, uses a local pea-like legume instead.

Assyrtiko, the crisp white wine grape trained into ground-hugging baskets against the wind, is native to which island?

Santorini: its volcanic soil has kept out the vine pest phylloxera, so many vines there grow ungrafted on their own roots and are centuries old.

Fasolada, sometimes called the national food of the Greeks, is a soup of what?

White beans: dried ones are simmered with tomato, carrot and celery, and the soup is traditionally eaten with herring and crusty bread on the side.

Avgolemono, the sauce and soup base, is made by whisking broth with what two ingredients?

Egg and lemon: warm broth is whisked into the beaten mixture a little at a time, tempering it so the eggs thicken the soup instead of curdling.

Magiritsa, the soup eaten right after the Paschal midnight liturgy, is made from what?

Lamb offal: the soup uses up the organs removed from the lamb that will be spit-roasted the next day, and it breaks the 40-day Lenten fast.

Taramasalata is a meze made from what?

Salted fish roe: cured cod or carp roe is whipped with bread or potato, oil and lemon; the real thing is beige, and the bright pink of shop tubs is added colouring.

On which day of the Orthodox calendar do Greeks traditionally eat taramasalata with onions and lemon?

Clean Monday opens Great Lent, so the table is meatless, and it is a public holiday that Greeks spend outdoors, picnicking and flying kites.

Skordalia, the thick garlic puree, classically partners which dish on Greece's national day, which falls during Lent?

Batter-fried salt cod: 25 March is also the Annunciation, a rare day in Lent when fish is allowed.

Who were the klephts, after whom kleftiko, lamb slow-roasted in a sealed parcel, is named?

Ottoman-era guerrillas and outlaws: the klephts are said to have cooked stolen lamb in sealed pits so that no smoke gave them away, and their name shares a root with kleptomania.

Saganaki, best known as fried cheese, is named after what?

A small two-handled frying pan: anything cooked in it takes the name, shrimp and mussels included, and setting the cheese alight is a habit that began in Chicago's Greektown, not Greece.

Halloumi, the squeaky grilling cheese, originates from where?

Cyprus: the island's cheese melts so slowly that slices can be grilled or fried until golden without losing their shape.

Kokoretsi, the spit-roasted Paschal favourite, is held together by an outer wrapping of what?

Lamb or goat intestines: they are wound around the skewered filling, and the spit turns alongside the Paschal lamb.

Loukaniko, the Greek sausage, is typically flavoured with fennel seed and what?

Orange peel: the recipe is distinctly Greek, but the name is not, coming from the Latin lucanica, a sausage the Romans named after Lucania in southern Italy.

Dolma takes its name from the Turkish verb dolmak, meaning what?

To be stuffed: the name covers any filled vegetable, from peppers and tomatoes to the little vine-wrapped rolls that most Greek menus mean by it.

The word meze, for the small dishes served with ouzo, came into Turkish and Greek from which language?

Persian: maze means 'taste' or 'relish', which is the point of the dishes, small plates meant to be picked at alongside a drink.

Loukoumades are deep-fried dough balls soaked in what?

Honey or syrup: the puffs are drenched while still hot from the fryer, then finished with cinnamon and often chopped walnuts.

Galaktoboureko is filo pastry wrapped around what filling?

Semolina custard: unlike a mille-feuille, it is baked inside the filo rather than added afterwards, and the finished pie is then drenched in a scented sugar bath.

Melomakarona, the walnut-topped Christmas cookies, are traditionally made with which fat?

Olive oil: it takes the place of butter, leaving the cookies free of dairy and eggs, unlike the buttery kourabiedes served beside them at Christmas.

A vasilopita, the New Year's Day cake, is baked with what inside it?

A coin or trinket: the cake is cut at midnight, a slice for each person in turn, and whoever finds the coin is promised luck for the whole year.

Tsoureki, in its classic braided form, is the traditional sweet bread of which holiday?

Easter: whole eggs dyed deep red are pressed into the braid before baking, and the dough is scented with mahleb and mastic.

Glyko tou koutaliou, the fruit preserves offered to guests, are traditionally served how?

Almost any fruit will do, and sour or bitter ones like unripe walnuts, quince and citrus peel are especially prized.

Bougatsa, the breakfast pastry of northern Greece, takes its name from the same Latin root as which Italian bread?

Focaccia: both names go back to the Latin for 'hearth bread', an odd ancestor for a filled pie of paper-thin pastry whose modern form took shape in northern Greece.

The koulouri sold from street carts in Athens is a bread ring coated in what?

Sesame seeds: each ring is dipped in water and rolled in the seeds before baking, and the snack, traced back to Byzantine times, is sold on almost every street corner.

Loukoumi, a sugar-dusted speciality of the Cyclades, is the Greek name for which sweet?

Turkish delight: the recipe reached the Cyclades with refugees who arrived after the Greek revolution broke out in 1821, and rose and bergamot remain the classic flavours.

Diples, the crisp pastry bows served at weddings and New Year, take their name from the Greek word for what?

Fold: each strip of dough is folded over on itself in the hot oil as it cooks, then finished with chopped walnuts and cinnamon.

So-called Greek yogurt is thicker than ordinary yogurt because most of what has been removed?

The whey: draining it off means more milk goes into every pot, which is why strained yogurt is thicker and costs more to make.

Stifado, the slow-cooked Greek stew of beef or rabbit, is defined by a generous amount of which small vegetable?

Pearl onions: they are the constant, simmered in tomato with wine or vinegar, so alongside the beef and rabbit versions there is even an octopus stifado.

Ancient Greek cuisine was founded on a 'Mediterranean triad' of which three products?

Cereals, olives and grapes: in practice barley cakes or bread, oil and wine, crops suited to the climate and valuable in trade, though pulses such as lentils mattered just as much to ordinary diets.

The syssitia, compulsory shared meals for men and youths, were a feature of which two ancient Greek societies?

Crete and Sparta: at Sparta not even a king could skip the mess; when King Agis, home from a victory, sent for his rations to dine with his wife, the officers refused to send them.

UNESCO lists Greece among the countries that share which entry on its Intangible Cultural Heritage list?

The Mediterranean diet: Greece, Italy, Spain and Morocco had it listed in 2010, and UNESCO's entry stresses eating together as much as the food itself.

Giouvetsi, a Greek Sunday dish of lamb or beef baked in tomato sauce, is made with which pasta?

Orzo: the rice-shaped pasta is toasted in the pan first, then baked with the meat so that it soaks up the tomato sauce.

Dakos, the Cretan meze, piles chopped tomato and crumbled cheese on top of what?

A barley rusk: the Cretan paximadi is baked twice until rock hard so that it keeps, so it is dampened first and then softened by the tomato juices.

Melitzanes papoutsakia, stuffed eggplants topped with bechamel, are named after which objects?

Papoutsakia means little shoes, a nod to the shape of the halved, filled eggplants.