I found my grandmother’s recipe box wrapped in a linen cloth, tucked behind jars of molokhia leaves and dried mint. The cards were written in three languages—Arabic, French, and a phonetic English that only she could decode. Each language marked a different life she had lived, all without leaving her kitchen. Borders had shifted around her, but her hands remembered what maps tried to erase.
This isn’t a nostalgia piece. It’s about the physical, edible proof of how political lines redraw what we eat, what we call our food, and what we quietly forget. From the slow-motion collapse of the Ottoman Empire to the partitions of the mid-20th century, the Levant was carved and recarved. And every time, something simmering on the stove was lost in translation.
The Empire That Cooked Together
Before 1918, a cook in Aleppo, Beirut, Jerusalem, or Amman shared a culinary grammar. The Ottoman Empire wasn’t a monolith—regional differences were sharp and celebrated—but ingredients and techniques traveled freely across administrative zones. Spice merchants moved from Diyarbakir to Damascus without crossing a border. Recipes for stuffed vegetables, lamb and bulgur kibbeh, and syrup-soaked semolina cakes appeared in homes from the Balkans to Baghdad, each with local fingerprints but a recognizable parent.
My great-aunt Warda, born in 1901 in what was then Ottoman Beirut, kept a notebook with a recipe for imam bayildi—the famous eggplant dish whose name means “the imam fainted,” supposedly from pleasure or from the cost of the olive oil. Her version used a generous handful of pine nuts and currants, a nod to Aleppo’s influence. She wrote the name in Turkish script, even though she spoke Arabic at home. The dish wasn’t Turkish or Lebanese or Syrian. It was simply hers.
When the empire collapsed, those shared kitchens were divided by mandates, passports, and eventually, hostility. The same dish began to acquire national costumes. In Turkey, imam bayildi became a standard of Ottoman heritage cuisine. In Lebanon, it was claimed as part of the Lebanese mezze table. In Greece, it was imam baildi, often with a thicker tomato sauce. The eggplant didn’t change. The story around it did.
The Mandate Era and the Rise of National Cuisines
After World War I, the French and British mandates carved the Levant into pieces that would become Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Transjordan, and Iraq. Each new entity needed a national identity, and food was conscripted into service. Cookbooks published in Beirut during the 1930s and 1940s began to label dishes as “Lebanese” that had previously been regional. Kibbeh nayyeh, raw lamb pounded with bulgur and spices, was suddenly a Lebanese national dish, though it was eaten from Mardin to Nazareth. The border made it property.
In Palestine, the British mandate period saw the codification of what was considered “Arab” food versus “Jewish” food, even when the ingredients and methods were nearly identical. Falafel, which had migrated down the Mediterranean coast, became a flashpoint decades later. But in the 1930s, it was still just a street snack, sold by vendors who didn’t ask about nationality.
My grandmother, who grew up in Haifa, remembered buying falafel from a cart near the port, wrapped in newspaper with a handful of pickled turnips. She called it “the breakfast of workers.” After 1948, she never returned to Haifa. She made falafel in Beirut, but she never called it Lebanese. She called it “the taste of the sea.”
1948 and the Great Culinary Rupture
The Nakba—the catastrophe of 1948—shattered Palestinian society and scattered its people across borders that had just been drawn. Families fled to Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and Gaza, carrying what they could. Recipes were carried in memory. Ingredients, however, were subject to the new geography.
In the refugee camps of Lebanon, women tried to recreate the dishes of their villages. But the wild thyme of the Galilee hills—za’atar baladi—didn’t grow in the Bekaa Valley. The olive oil was different, lighter, less peppery. The fish from the Mediterranean near Acre was replaced by sardines from the Lebanese coast. The dish was the same in name, but its body had changed.
One dish that nearly vanished was msakhan, the Palestinian roast chicken with sumac, onions, and pine nuts over taboon bread. In the Galilee, it was a celebration dish, cooked in a clay oven. In exile, the taboon was often replaced by a gas stove, the bread by store-bought pita. The sumac still stained the onions purple, but the smokiness was gone. My grandmother’s friend, Um Jamil, who settled in Burj al-Barajneh camp, said, “We eat to remember, but the memory tastes different now.”
When Names Become Battlefields
Food nationalism isn’t just about claiming ownership. It’s also about erasing the other. After 1948, Israeli state institutions began promoting a national cuisine that often appropriated Palestinian dishes while renaming them. Hummus, falafel, shakshuka—all were rebranded as Israeli foods in international media, cookbooks, and tourism campaigns. The original cooks were rendered invisible.
This isn’t a simple story of theft. It’s a story of how borders create legal and cultural vacuums that are then filled by those with power. When a Palestinian farmer could no longer access his olive groves in what became Israel, the groves were tended by others. The oil still flowed, but the label changed. The taste of that oil—bitter, green, with a peppery finish—remained the same. But the story told about it was rewritten.
In Lebanon, Syrian refugees after 2011 faced a similar culinary dislocation. They cooked the dishes of Aleppo and Idlib in Beirut kitchens, but the ingredients were Lebanese, the water was different, the yogurt tangier. Their kibbeh bil sanieh—baked kibbeh layered with spiced meat and pine nuts—was still Syrian in their hearts, but their children, growing up in Lebanon, began to call it “the way Mama makes it.” The national label was fading, replaced by a familial one. That’s how food survives borders: by becoming intimate.
The Forgotten Pantries of the Levant
Some ingredients were simply left behind. The tiny, sour plums called janerik that grew in Damascus orchards were once eaten green with salt by children across the region. After the borders hardened, they became a Syrian memory, unavailable in Beirut markets except through smugglers or relatives. The same happened with freekeh, the smoked green wheat that was a staple in southern Syria and northern Palestine. It survived in Syrian cuisine but nearly disappeared from the Israeli diet, replaced by couscous and rice.
Other ingredients were deliberately erased. During the Lebanese Civil War, certain foods became associated with sectarian groups. Eating kibbeh nayyeh in West Beirut marked you as Christian; in the south, it was a Shia tradition. The dish itself was neutral, but the checkpoint made it political. My grandmother stopped making it for years. “Too much blood in the meat,” she said, and I didn’t know if she meant the war or the memory.
Recipes That Crossed Back
Borders aren’t always walls. Sometimes they’re membranes, allowing certain things to pass while blocking others. The Lebanese diaspora, which exploded during the civil war, carried tabbouleh and hummus to Europe, the Americas, and Australia. These dishes became global, detached from their origins. In Paris, tabbouleh was made with couscous instead of bulgur, and parsley was reduced to a garnish. The dish mutated, but it also survived.
In recent years, Syrian refugees have opened restaurants in Berlin, Istanbul, and Cairo, reintroducing Aleppine cuisine to cities that had forgotten it. Dishes like kibbeh safarjaliyeh—kibbeh in a quince and pomegranate sauce—are being cooked again, not in Aleppo, where the quince orchards have been destroyed, but in exile. The recipe crossed the border when the cook could not.
This is the paradox of culinary borders: they erase and they preserve. A dish that is forced to move often becomes a treasured heirloom, guarded fiercely. A dish that stays in its homeland can be taken for granted, slowly simplified, until its original complexity is forgotten. My grandmother’s recipe box is a museum of dishes that no longer exist in their native soil. But they exist in my kitchen, and now in yours.
What We Forgot and Why It Matters
We forgot that maqluba—the upside-down rice and vegetable dish—was once a Friday staple from Jenin to Jaffa, not a “Palestinian national dish” but a regional one. We forgot that sahlab, the winter drink thickened with orchid root powder, was sold by street vendors in Ottoman Istanbul, Beirut, and Jerusalem with the same cry: “Sahlab, sahlab, ya helw!” We forgot that the separation wall in the West Bank cut off farmers from their olive trees, and that the oil from those trees now sits on shelves labeled “Product of Israel.” We forgot the names of the villages that grew the best za’atar.
Forgetting isn’t passive. It’s often an active process encouraged by states that want to homogenize their populations. School curricula teach national cuisines as if they sprang fully formed from the soil of the modern nation-state. Cookbooks erase the Ottoman and Arab influences on Greek and Turkish dishes, and vice versa. The shared past is sliced into separate histories, each claiming originality.
But the kitchen remembers. In my grandmother’s box, there’s a recipe for yaprak—stuffed grape leaves—written in Turkish, with Arabic notes in the margins. The filling includes currants and pine nuts, a sweet-savory combination that’s now considered “old-fashioned” in Lebanon, where stuffed leaves are mostly sour. She never changed her recipe. She said, “The sourness came with the French. We were sweet before.”
Frequently Asked Questions
Why do some dishes have different names in different countries?
Many dishes predate modern borders and were known by regional or familial names. When nation-states formed, they often standardized names to fit national languages and narratives. For example, imam bayildi is called the same in Turkey and Lebanon, but in Greece it became imam baildi. Sometimes the name changes entirely: what Palestinians call msakhan is unknown by that name in many neighboring countries, though similar roast chicken dishes exist.
How did the 1948 Nakba affect Palestinian food?
The Nakba displaced over 700,000 Palestinians, scattering them across multiple countries. This broke the direct link between dishes and their local ingredients. Wild herbs, specific olive oils, and clay ovens were left behind. Recipes were adapted to new environments, often losing subtle flavors and textures. At the same time, Palestinian food became a powerful symbol of identity and memory in exile, preserved with intense care.
Is hummus Lebanese, Palestinian, Israeli, or something else?
Hummus is a Levantine dish with roots stretching back centuries, long before modern borders existed. It was eaten across the region by various communities. The question of national ownership arose in the late 20th century, fueled by political conflict and international marketing. Historically, hummus belongs to the shared culinary heritage of the Levant, not to any single modern nation-state.
Cooking to Remember
I make my grandmother’s yaprak every autumn, when the grape leaves are tender. I soak the rice, toast the pine nuts, and add the currants she insisted on. The kitchen fills with the smell of olive oil and allspice. I roll the leaves tightly, the way she taught me, tucking in the edges so the filling doesn’t escape. As they simmer, I think about the borders that tried to separate her from this dish, and how the dish outlasted them.
Food isn’t just sustenance. It’s a record of what people refused to surrender. Every time we cook a dish that crossed a border, we’re eating a piece of political history. The sumac in the msakhan, the pine nuts in the kibbeh, the currants in the yaprak—these aren’t just ingredients. They’re witnesses.
So the next time you sit down to a Levantine meal, ask not just what country it comes from, but what borders it has crossed, what names it has lost, and what memories it still carries. The answer is usually in the first bite.