Mithaecus facts for kids

Mithaecus was a famous cook and cookbook writer who lived a long, long time ago, around the 400s BC. He was from Sicily, an island known for its amazing culture and delicious food back then. Mithaecus is often given credit for bringing many of Sicily's great cooking ideas to Ancient Greece.

Some stories say he worked in Sparta, but he was asked to leave because some people thought his cooking ideas were too new or fancy. He also worked in Athens. Even a very famous philosopher named Plato mentioned Mithaecus in his book Gorgias, though not always in a positive way.

The First Cookbook Author

Mithaecus is special because he wrote the very first cookbook we know about! It was also the first Greek cookbook, even though we don't have the whole book today.

Only one tiny recipe from his book still exists. We know about it because another ancient writer, Athenaeus, quoted it in his book Deipnosophistae. The recipe is written in an old Greek language style called Doric, which was common in Sicily and Sparta.

His Famous Fish Recipe

The recipe tells us how to prepare a ribbon-like fish called tainia (which is known today as cepola in Italian or kordella in modern Greek). It's very short and to the point:

Tainia: gut, discard the head, rinse, slice; add cheese and [olive] oil.

A Controversial Ingredient

Adding cheese to fish was a bit controversial back then! Another ancient writer named Archestratus even warned his readers that cooks from Syracuse (a city in Sicily) would ruin good fish by adding cheese.