The Origins of Mousaka, and my Sloppy Version

Based on my mother’s recipe my version of the ubiquitous dish is more like a gratin as it was probably in the old days.

In the late ‘80ies, when I first started to research the origin of various popular Greek dishes, I was convinced that the current version of béchamel-topped mousaka was invented during the golden years of the Ottoman Empire, probably in the spectacular kitchens of Topkapi Palace, in Istanbul. Maybe a creative French-educated cook enriched the traditional Middle Eastern dish with the classic French sauce, I thought. But further investigation revealed that before the early twentieth century there was no mousaka as we know it today.

It is not surprising that the most popular Greek dishes throughout the world are not the chickpea or bean soup, the yellow split peas or the stewed mixed seasonal vegetables and greens that most Greeks ate regularly up until the late 1960ies. Those dishes only recently started to be part of the menu of upscale Greek restaurants, after the health benefits of the Mediterranean Diet were publicized. Mousaka, pasticcio, Greek salad, and maybe youvetsi (baked lamb with orzo in tomato sauce) are the dishes most non-Greeks consider to be the epitome of Greek cooking. Yet, most of those dishes have very little to do with traditional foods.  They were developed, or drastically revised, by professional cooks and restaurant owners who were particularly interested to please the Athenian upper class of the early 20th century. The cosmopolitan Greeks of Smyrna (Izmir today) and Alexandria, in Egypt, were brought up eating mainly French-inspired foods in these prosperous cities of the Mediterranean, thus favored tamed, sweet and creamy combinations of traditional oriental favorites –like the eggplant casserole; dishes that also pleased the palates of European and American visitors.

Mousaka is probably the first dish that comes to mind if somebody is asked to name a single Greek food item; yet the word “mousaka” is hardly Greek. Probably of Arabic origin, in Turkey it describes a casserole of baked sliced eggplants and meat, while in Lebanon and other Middle Eastern countries it is a cold dish of fried eggplants dressed with a rich tomato sauce. ”The Arabic word musaqqâ means ‘moistened’, referring to the tomato juices,” explains Charles Perry in the Oxford Companion to Food. Greeks often eat a similar meatless dish, calling it pseudo-mousaka. It is popular in the summer, cooked especially during the numerous Lenten days, when good Christians abstain from foods deriving from animals (meat, eggs and dairy).

In her famous Book of Mediterranean Food, published in 1950, Elizabeth David includes a mousaka topped with a thin crust of yogurt mixed with egg yolks. Five years later, in her Summer Cooking, David writes that  “there are a good many version of this dish (mousaka), which is known in Rumania, Yugoslavia, Greece and all over the Near East.” David’s summer version has no topping at all. Her casserole of eggplants, minced mutton, and tomato slices is doused in a garlicky tomato sauce with plenty of herbs.

For today’s Greeks the real mousaka, deliciously flavored with ground lamb, is not an everyday dish. It is baked in the urban homes as a treat for guests and family on special festive days. It has a lush topping of béchamel sauce –or “cream”, as it is often called. According to my research this mousaka became part of the urban Greek kitchen in the early days of the 20th century, after Nicholas Tselemetes’ cookbook came out.

In the 1920ies Tselementes, a Greek chef who had served in such places as the St. Moritz Hotel in New York and the Sacher in Vienna published his cooking bible. The book is a compilation of all kinds of recipes  (French, Italian, American etc.) together with the Greek ones Tselementes considered important. There were also chapters on how to serve and present food, how to dress the maids, etc. That book made an enormous impact on the rising Athenian middle and upper classes, and to this day “Tselementes” for Greeks is synonymous with “cookbook”. His beliefs and ideas of what is right and what is wrong influenced not just home cooking, but also professional cooks, as he was the principal teacher to all the important schools of cooking. He revised –in my opinion destroyed–  many Greek recipes trying to conform them to classic French cuisine. He believed that European cooking had its origins directly in ancient Greece. Under the Turkish rule Greek cooking became more eastern, he thought, and this he was determined to correct.

Strange as it might seem, the history of modern Greece, its relation with its eastern neighbors, the strong nationalistic pride and the country’s quest for a brave, new, European-oriented future, played a significant role in the gradual development of urban cooking. Tselementes writes that the traditional foods need to regain the “Greekness” they lost during the long Turkish occupation; they should, “…be revised by learned cooks who will rid those dishes from the contamination they suffered.“ The exclusion of spices and even herbs from the spicy and fragrant traditional foods resulted in almost insipid dishes many Greek restaurants still serve. Tselementes went as far as to omit  thyme and bay leaves from Escoffier’s recipe for sauce Espagnole, in his Greek translation. He also despised garlic, which he very seldom uses it in his recipes!

There is a whole chapter entitled “Mousakas” in Tselementes’ book. It includes six recipes, basically substituting zucchini, artichokes or potatoes, for the eggplants. He even has one very interesting variation with alternate layers of zucchini and tomato slices, both dredged in flour and fried. Tomatoes were just starting to be part of the Greek cuisine, in the 1920ies, and in early recipes they are not yet used in sauces.The version of mousaka I make is loosely based on my mother’s recipe, to which I have added a layer of fried peppers. It  is more like a gratin as it was probably in the old days. I serve large sloppy spoonfuls, far off from the perfectly cut mousaka squares one gets in restaurants. My light olive oil béchamel is pleasantly tangy as I substitute yogurt for part of the milk.

RECIPE: Aglaia’s Mousaka