Why did this dish (first discussed in an 1844 cookbook) make the priest faint? Some say it was with pleasure, some say because of the extravagant amount of oil in it and some say because it used up every ingredient in his pantry. The story I like comes from Moveable Feasts: The History, Science and Lore of Food, where Gregory McNamee says the imam married the daughter of an olive oil seller. Every day after the wedding she made him an eggplant dish cooked in her father’s olive oil