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Meat Cooked with Lemon, Wine, or Tomatoes

Appears in
The Foods of Greece
The Foods of Greece

By Aglaia Kremezi

Published 1993

  • About
The strong flavor of the olive oil used in Greek cooking needs to be balanced by the acidity of wine, vinegar, or lemon juice. Adding wine and vinegar when cooking meat goes back to ancient times. When lemon trees were planted in every garden, lemon juice found its way into many dishes, providing its special flavor and aroma.

Tomatoes came quite late to Greece. In what we consider to be the first Greek cookbook—which was a translation of an Italian one, published in 1828 on Syros—tomatoes are called golden apples (from the Italian pomodoro) and are used in only one or two of the recipes. But they quickly became part of everyday Greek cooking, as their slightly acid flesh complemented the olive oil. Today, Greek cooks have a tendency to overuse tomatoes and sometimes all the other flavors are buried under a thick tomato sauce.

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