Olive Relish

The olive tree had been under cultivation in Greece for 1,000 years, if not longer, when the Iliad and the Odyssey were composed; classical civilisation is almost unimaginable without it. At classical Greek banquets olives were served in brine, and sometimes, no doubt, they were served as relishes (side to bread) similar to this.

Olives were important to the Romans, both in themselves and for their oil. So it is not surprising that numerous ways of preserving or flavoring them appear in works on agriculture. Columella (4 – ca. 70) includes various instructions for processing them, but also some for simply preparing them. One is for epityrum, which is mentioned or described elsewhere as well. In his recipe, he begins with instructions for choosing and cleaning the olives and leaving them in the press overnight. Then:

when the thin rind is broken and opened, we take it out of the press; and, upon each modius of olives, we pour a single sextary of bruised toasted salt; also we mix mastich-seed with them, and fennel- and rue-leaves dried under a shade, after they seem to be cut small enough; and we let them stand three hours, till the berry, in some measure, drink up the salt. Then we pour oil of a good taste upon them, so that it may cover the olive; and we press down a bundle of dry fennel upon them, so that the liquor may swim above them. But, for this sort of pickle, new earthen vessels, without any pitch, are prepared; and, that they may not sip up the oil, they are soaked with melted tallow, or the like, as oil-jars are; and then afterwards they are dried.

Columellas's “olive marmelade” (as one translator calls it) is one of several ways of preserving olives, but also creating something like a tapenade. First the olives are squeezed whole overnight; then:

The day following they throw it into a very clean suspended mill, that its kernel may not be broken: and, when they are reduced to a mash, then with their hand they mix with them toasted and bruised salt, with the other dry seasonings; and these are fenugreek, cumin, fennel-seed, and Egyptian anise-seed. But it will be sufficient to put as many hemina of salt to them, as there are modii of olives; and to pour oil upon them, lest they wither; and that ought to be done as often as they shall seem to be dried.