Borders are not just lines on a map; they are also lines drawn through a pantry. When the Ottoman Empire collapsed and the Eastern Mediterranean was carved into mandates, protectorates, and nation-states, the new boundaries did not simply divide land. They divided recipes, renamed dishes, and decided which ingredients would be remembered as “ours” and which would be forgotten as “theirs.” This article is about that quiet violence: the way a border can enter a kitchen and rearrange the shelves. It is about how borders changed what people ate and what they forgot—and how the forgetting itself became a kind of political act.
For the communities of the 20th-century Eastern Mediterranean and North Africa—Greeks, Turks, Armenians, Arabs, Jews, Kurds, Assyrians, and the many smaller groups caught between them—food was never just sustenance. It was a ledger of belonging. A pot of molokhia in Cairo, a tray of kibbeh in Aleppo, a pan of moussaka in Thessaloniki: each dish carried the fingerprints of people who had crossed, fled, or been expelled from somewhere else. When a border moved, the dish stayed, but its name often changed. And with the name, the memory.
The Mandate Kitchen: How Colonial Lines Rewrote the Menu
After the First World War, the Sykes-Picot Agreement and the Treaty of Lausanne did not just create new states; they created new culinary nationalisms. The French mandate in Syria and Lebanon, the British mandate in Palestine and Iraq, and the Italian occupation of the Dodecanese all brought with them a particular kind of administrative hunger. Colonial officials wanted to classify, standardize, and “improve” local food. They introduced new crops, new cooking fats, and new ideas about hygiene and nutrition. But they also introduced a more insidious idea: that a nation’s food should be singular, pure, and easily labeled.
In Lebanon, for example, the French encouraged the cultivation of wheat and the production of bread in ways that suited French tastes and export markets. Local breads—markouk, saj, and the many flatbreads baked by village women—were increasingly seen as backward, unhygienic, or simply not “modern.” The same pattern repeated in North Africa, where French colonial policy pushed for durum wheat and soft wheat varieties that would feed the metropole, while traditional barley and sorghum dishes were marginalized. The result was not just a change in what people ate, but a change in what they were allowed to remember as valuable.
This is the first lesson of the mandate kitchen: colonialism did not only steal land; it stole the vocabulary of taste. When a dish is renamed, reclassified, or removed from the official record, the people who made it are also removed. The border becomes a kind of eraser.
Population Exchange and the Politics of the Pot
Perhaps the most brutal example of borders changing food is the 1923 population exchange between Greece and Turkey. Under the Treaty of Lausanne, over a million Greek Orthodox Christians were forced to leave Turkey, and around 400,000 Muslims were forced to leave Greece. They were allowed to take only what they could carry. Many carried seeds. Many carried sourdough starters. Many carried nothing but the memory of a dish.
In the kitchens of Piraeus and Thessaloniki, the refugees from Anatolia brought with them dishes that would become central to modern Greek cuisine: soutzoukakia, imam bayildi, pastourma, and the many meze traditions of the Aegean coast. But they also brought a grief that could not be spoken. The dishes were kept, but their origins were often blurred. A Greek housewife in the 1930s might serve dolmades without ever saying that her mother had learned to roll them in Smyrna. The dish became “Greek,” and the memory of the lost city became a private sorrow.
On the other side of the Aegean, Muslim refugees from Crete and Macedonia brought their own foods to Turkey: Cretan otlar, Macedonian börek, and the olive oil traditions of the Aegean islands. These dishes were absorbed into Turkish cuisine, but the refugees themselves were often treated as outsiders. Their food was accepted; their stories were not. The border had divided the people, but the pot remained a shared vessel—a vessel that both sides now claimed as their own.
The Palestinian Table: A Cuisine Under Siege
No discussion of borders and food in the Eastern Mediterranean can avoid Palestine. The Nakba of 1948 and the ongoing occupation have not only displaced millions of Palestinians; they have also displaced Palestinian food. Dishes that were once common in the villages of Galilee and the coastal plain—maqluba, musakhan, knafeh—have become symbols of a nation that is denied statehood. The food itself has become a witness.
In the refugee camps of Lebanon, Jordan, and Syria, Palestinian women have kept the old recipes alive as a form of resistance. Maqluba, the upside-down rice and vegetable dish, is not just a meal; it is a memory of home. Musakhan, the sumac-and-onion chicken over taboon bread, is a map of the villages that were destroyed. Knafeh, the sweet cheese pastry of Nablus, is a claim to a city that is now divided by checkpoints and walls.
But the border has also worked in the other direction. Israeli cuisine has absorbed many Palestinian dishes and presented them as “Israeli.” Hummus, falafel, and shakshuka are now marketed globally as Israeli foods, while the Palestinian origins of these dishes are often erased. This is not a neutral culinary exchange; it is a form of gastro-nationalism that uses food to legitimize territorial claims. When a dish is renamed, the people who made it are also renamed—or removed from the story entirely.
The stakes here are not abstract. In 2008, Lebanon set a Guinness World Record for the largest plate of hummus, explicitly framed as a response to Israel’s claim to the dish. The “hummus wars” are not a joke; they are a battle over memory, identity, and the right to exist. The border is not just on the map; it is in the bowl.
North Africa: The Colonial Oven and the Postcolonial Palate
In North Africa, the French and Italian colonial projects left a deep mark on the kitchen. In Algeria, the French introduced the baguette, which became a staple of urban life. In Tunisia, the Italian community brought pasta, which was absorbed into local cooking as makrouna. In Morocco, the French encouraged the production of wine, which had been largely absent under Islamic rule. These changes were not simply additions; they were also subtractions. Traditional grains like barley and millet were replaced by wheat. Traditional cooking fats like smen and olive oil were replaced by imported butter and margarine. The colonial oven baked a new kind of bread, and the old breads were forgotten.
After independence, the new nation-states of North Africa faced a dilemma. They wanted to reclaim their culinary heritage, but that heritage had already been transformed by colonialism. The result was a kind of double consciousness: a pride in “authentic” dishes like couscous and tajine, alongside a quiet dependence on the colonial foods that had become everyday staples. The border between “authentic” and “colonial” was never clean, and the attempt to draw it often produced new forms of forgetting.
In Algeria, for example, the war of independence was also a war over bread. The French had made the baguette a symbol of modernity and civilization; the FLN made it a symbol of colonial oppression. After 1962, the new Algerian state promoted khobz eddar, the home-baked semolina bread, as the true bread of the nation. But the baguette did not disappear. It remained, a ghost at the table, a reminder that the border between colonizer and colonized was never as clean as the nationalists wanted it to be.
The Diaspora Kitchen: Memory as a Portable Homeland
When people cross borders, they carry their kitchens with them. The Armenian diaspora, scattered by the genocide of 1915 and the subsequent expulsions, is perhaps the most poignant example. Armenian communities in Beirut, Aleppo, Marseille, and Los Angeles have kept the old dishes alive—lahmajoun, manti, choreg—as a way of remembering a homeland that no longer exists. The food is not just a comfort; it is a testimony.
But the diaspora kitchen is also a place of loss. The ingredients change. The names change. The recipes are adapted to new ovens, new climates, new neighbors. A Lebanese grandmother in Montreal might make kibbeh with beef instead of lamb, because lamb is too expensive. A Syrian refugee in Berlin might make fattoush with German cucumbers, because the small, ridged cucumbers of Damascus are not available. The dish survives, but it is not the same dish. The border has entered the recipe itself.
This is the paradox of the diaspora kitchen: it preserves memory by transforming it. The dish is a witness, but it is also a refugee. It has crossed the border, and it will never be the same. The question is not whether the dish is “authentic,” but what it remembers—and what it has been forced to forget.
What the Border Forgets: The Silences in the Recipe
Every recipe is a document, and every document has its silences. When a border changes, the silences grow louder. The dish that was once called yaprak sarma in Istanbul becomes dolmades in Athens. The warak enab of Beirut becomes the dolmades of a Greek taverna in Melbourne. The name changes, and with it, the memory of the people who first rolled the leaves.
But the forgetting is not always passive. Sometimes it is deliberate. Nation-states have used food to build national identities, and that building often requires demolition. The Turkish state, for example, promoted döner and baklava as national dishes, while downplaying the Armenian, Greek, and Kurdish contributions to those dishes. The Greek state did the same with moussaka and pastitsio, which owe much to the Ottoman kitchen. The Israeli state has done the same with hummus and falafel. In each case, the border is not just a line on a map; it is a line through the cookbook.
This is why the work of food historians is so important. Scholars like Claudia Roden, Charles Perry, and Nawal Nasrallah have spent decades tracing the movements of dishes across borders, languages, and empires. Their work is a kind of counter-archive, a record of what the nation-states tried to forget. When we read their books, we are not just learning recipes; we are learning the names of the people who were erased from the official story.
Practical Takeaways: How to Read a Recipe as a Witness Statement
If you want to understand how borders changed what people ate and what they forgot, start with your own kitchen. Here are a few practical ways to read a recipe as a witness statement:
- Ask about the name. Every dish has multiple names. Dolmades, yaprak sarma, warak enab, sarmale—the name tells you who is speaking, and who is being silenced.
- Ask about the ingredients. Why did this recipe change from lamb to beef? Why did the cook switch from olive oil to butter? The answer is often a border, a war, or a market.
- Ask about the silence. What is not in the recipe? What was left out because it was too painful, too political, or too dangerous to remember?
- Ask about the cook. Who made this dish? A grandmother in a refugee camp? A chef in a colonial kitchen? A street vendor in a divided city? The cook is the real author of the recipe.
These questions are not just academic. They are a way of honoring the people who carried these dishes across borders, often at great cost. When we eat maqluba, we are eating the memory of a village that no longer exists. When we eat lahmajoun, we are eating the memory of a genocide. The dish is a witness, and we are the listeners.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why do so many Mediterranean dishes have multiple names?
Because the Eastern Mediterranean has been ruled by successive empires—Ottoman, French, British, Italian—and each empire left its own names on the same dishes. A stuffed vine leaf is dolma in Turkish, dolmades in Greek, warak enab in Arabic, and sarmale in Romanian. The multiple names are not a coincidence; they are a record of the borders that divided the region.
Is it fair to call hummus “Israeli” or “Lebanese” or “Palestinian”?
Hummus is a Levantine dish with deep roots in the Arab kitchen. The modern debate over its ownership is not really about food; it is about the political legitimacy of the states that claim it. When a dish is used to support a territorial claim, the stakes are not culinary but national. The honest answer is that hummus belongs to the people of the Levant, and any attempt to assign it to a single nation-state is a political act, not a historical one.
How did the 1923 population exchange change Greek and Turkish food?
The exchange forced over a million Greeks and Turks to leave their homes, and they carried their recipes with them. Greek refugees from Anatolia brought dishes like soutzoukakia and imam bayildi to Greece, while Muslim refugees from Crete and Macedonia brought their own dishes to Turkey. The foods were absorbed into the national cuisines, but the memories of the lost homelands were often suppressed. The result is a shared culinary heritage that both nations now claim as exclusively their own.
What is gastro-nationalism?
Gastro-nationalism is the use of food to promote a national identity or territorial claim. It often involves renaming dishes, claiming them as “national,” and erasing the contributions of other communities. The hummus wars between Lebanon and Israel are a classic example, but the pattern appears across the region, from Turkish baklava to Greek moussaka.
How can I learn more about the political history of Mediterranean food?
Start with the work of food historians like Claudia Roden, whose A Book of Middle Eastern Food is a foundational text, and Nawal Nasrallah, whose scholarship on medieval Arab cooking is essential. For the Palestinian context, Reem Kassis’s The Palestinian Table is a powerful blend of recipes and memory. These books are not just cookbooks; they are archives of displacement and survival.
This article is part of a continuing series on the political economy of the Mediterranean table. A follow-up piece will examine the role of the refugee camp kitchen in preserving and transforming the cuisines of Palestine, Syria, and Armenia. If you have a family recipe that crossed a border, I would like to hear its story.