Food Traditions
Mezze
MEZ-eh
Also Known As Meze; Mezza
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Mezze, also spelled meze, is an array of small savory dishes, dips, salads and hot items served together and shared communally; in Lebanon and Cyprus especially it often constitutes an entire meal rather than a prelude to one. It is practiced across the Levant and more broadly the eastern Mediterranean, Turkey, Greece and the Balkans, and food historians understand it as defined by the act of communal sharing rather than by any single dish. The Oxford Companion to Food traces the word to the Persian maza, meaning taste or relish, describing an ancient Persian wine culture in which tart fruits such as pomegranates, quinces and citrons were served to offset unripe wine, later expanded to nuts and small roasted meats. Britannica's food entries describe meze as commonly paired with a drink such as arak or raki, with the number and variety of dishes offered read as a sign of a host's generosity.
Facts
Disputed
Origin RegionAncient Persia, with mezze's spread into the Levant and the wider Ottoman-controlled eastern Mediterranean undated in the sources consulted 1 No specific start or end year for mezze's origin or diffusion was found in any reputable source consulted; presented as ancient Persian in origin per the Oxford Companion to Food, spreading through Ottoman channels at an unspecified later date. Following this atlas's own precedent on Salt: an unfixable date is refused, not invented, so origin-start-year and origin-end-year are left unset for this entity. Sources
Open Questions (1 open question)
In what specific century or decade did the mezze custom of serving small dishes with drink begin?
Wikipedia's own history section places the origin only as "medieval times," specifically crediting Byzantine Greek and later Ottoman Greek households and tavernes, with no century or decade named. The word meze itself is traced further back, to Ancient Persia, but that is an etymology claim about the WORD, not a dated claim about when the small-dish PRACTICE began; the two should not be conflated into one number.
What would resolve this A dated primary source, a household account, monastic record, market regulation or archaeological find, that places the small-dish-with-drink custom in a specific century within the broad medieval Byzantine window, rather than the general "medieval times" description current secondary sources give.
Culinary and social historyMezze (Wikipedia)
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