The Mission to Preserve Traditional Table Olive Recipes

Summary

The Olives Around the Table project, part of the Entangled Destiny ini­tia­tive, is col­lect­ing tra­di­tional table olive recipes from Mediterranean coun­tries to cre­ate a dig­i­tal archive, aim­ing to pre­serve these recipes and pre­vent them from being lost to his­tory due to cli­mate change, rural depop­u­la­tion, and glob­al­iza­tion. The project has received sub­mis­sions from coun­tries such as France, Lebanon, and Turkey, and hopes to cap­ture the diverse cul­tural and nat­ural her­itage of the Mediterranean through these recipes.

A National Geographic Society-backed project is col­lect­ing tra­di­tional table olive recipes from across the Mediterranean basin for a new dig­i­tal archive.

The orga­niz­ers of Olives Around the Table, a side ini­tia­tive of the broader Entangled Destiny project, have issued a call for tra­di­tional table olive recipes from approx­i­mately 20 coun­tries and have already received entries from France, Lebanon, and Turkey.

Magda Bou Dagher Kharrat, a prin­ci­pal sci­en­tist at the European Forest Institute’s Mediterranean facil­ity, told Olive Oil Times that the goal is to col­lect at least one to three tra­di­tional recipes from each Mediterranean coun­try.

She added that the idea for the ini­tia­tive came after she and two National Geographic Explorers col­leagues ​“wan­dered through Lebanon, Italy and Spain trac­ing how peo­ple con­nect with three emblem­atic trees: the olive, the carob, and the stone pine.”

“Wherever we went, one thing never failed to appear: olives, always present around the table, qui­etly link­ing peo­ple, land­scapes and sto­ries,” Bou Dagher said. ​“I saw in this sim­ple fruit a whole world of uncel­e­brated diver­sity and decided to give it a voice.”

After for­mally launch­ing the ini­tia­tive, she was joined by food jour­nal­ist David McKenzie and Gabriela Moscardini, now the project’s head of com­mu­ni­ca­tion.

Bou Dagher said the inspi­ra­tion for cre­at­ing a ​“liv­ing repos­i­tory” of the tra­di­tional recipes and table olive pro­duc­tion meth­ods came after the Covid-19 pan­demic, as some fur­loughed young pro­fes­sion­als across the Mediterranean left their adop­tive urban homes to return to fam­ily vil­lages.

“Their return sparked unex­pected change: fam­ily recipes resur­faced, tra­di­tional know-how gained new value, and local prod­ucts began to reach inter­na­tional mar­kets,” she said. ​“In the Lebanese vil­lage of Bchaaleh, for instance, a local olive vari­ety, Ayrouni, found new life thanks to young peo­ple who revived aban­doned fam­ily groves and busi­nesses.”

The three co-founders also empha­sized the need to col­lect and pre­serve tra­di­tional table olive recipes to pre­vent them from being lost to his­tory, as ​“cli­mate change, rural depop­u­la­tion and glob­al­iza­tion” put some cul­ti­vars and prepa­ra­tion meth­ods at risk of dis­ap­pear­ing. 

“Higher tem­per­a­tures, longer peri­ods of drought and less pre­dictable sea­sonal weather pat­terns – espe­cially for crit­i­cal peri­ods dur­ing the olive’s fruit­ing cycle, such as heavy rain­fall dur­ing spring flow­er­ing or unusu­ally hot, dry autumn con­di­tions just prior to har­vest – are among some impacts of cli­mate change that con­tinue to cause prob­lems for many tra­di­tional olive-grow­ing regions such as Cyprus, Tunisia and south­ern Spain,” McKenzie said.

He added that these impacts of cli­mate change are coin­cid­ing with an ongo­ing demo­graphic shift, which has seen younger gen­er­a­tions move from rural to urban areas, espe­cially in Greece and Italy, leav­ing these tra­di­tions behind as well.

“Meanwhile, the onset of glob­al­ized, indus­trial long-chain sup­ply mar­kets has also made it harder for local farm­ers and food pro­duc­ers to com­pete with imported prod­ucts, mean­ing more and more groves are being sold, aban­doned, or con­verted to other uses,” McKenzie said.

“All of these issues are inter­linked and have dif­fer­ent roles depend­ing on the place and con­text. But these are some of the fac­tors putting such knowl­edge and tra­di­tions at risk of dis­ap­pear­ing,” he added.

While Olives Around the Table has received four sub­mis­sions, Moscardini said the group is reach­ing out to com­mu­ni­ties across the Mediterranean basin for new ones.

“Our goal is to cap­ture as much diver­sity as pos­si­ble – in olive vari­eties, prepa­ra­tion meth­ods, and geo­graphic ori­gins,” she said, ​“It’s truly a mosaic of the region, cel­e­brat­ing its rich cul­tural and nat­ural diver­sity.”

The project is cur­rently lim­ited to table olive recipes, but the group hopes to expand the rubric in future projects to include all olive-based recipes from the region.

So far, Olives Around the Table has pub­lished a tra­di­tional recipe from Fanar, Lebanon, for pick­led and crushed table olives.

“We fill small glass jars with the pick­led olives and use a jarra fekharr, a tra­di­tional clay ves­sel, for the crushed ones,” Katia Massoud wrote in her sub­mis­sion. ​“All we add are lemon slices, coarse salt, and a sin­gle chili pep­per. Over time, the fla­vors marry – fresh, salty, and warmly spiced.”

“This recipe, passed down through gen­er­a­tions in both my fam­ily and my husband’s, feels time­less,” she added. ​“I couldn’t tell you exactly when it began; I only know it’s always been there, part of our daily life, not reserved for spe­cial occa­sions.”

Another Lebanese recipe, sub­mit­ted by Lea Kharrat from Kfardebian, details how to pre­serve local olives with water, coarse salt, and lemon slices. ​“For extra aroma, some fam­i­lies also add sprigs of rose­mary, a dash of chili, or a slice of bit­ter orange,” she wrote.

For his part, McKenzie also pro­vided a recipe from the Kalin fam­ily in Turkey for Sar Ulak table olives, which are pro­tected by a geo­graph­i­cal indi­ca­tion.

The olives are either crushed and soaked in water for a week to remove some of their nat­ural bit­ter­ness or left whole in lightly salted brine for a month. Occasionally, the fam­ily adds mint or sumac for addi­tional fla­vor. 

“Once ready, the olives can be enjoyed plain, or, in true Turkish style, dressed with a driz­zle of olive oil and a sprin­kling of spices such as mint, cumin or sumac,” McKenzie wrote.

The only entry to date from the European Union comes from the south of France, where Zoé Waller recorded a local recipe for table olives pre­pared in brine from the vil­lage of Eygalières.

“We are inter­ested in gath­er­ing not only the dif­fer­ent meth­ods and tech­niques of prepar­ing table olives, but also the sto­ries, mem­o­ries and cul­tural mean­ings behind them,” McKenzie said. ​“We want to under­stand who passed on this knowl­edge, how it has been pre­served, and why it still mat­ters today.”

According to Bou Dagher, suc­cess in the short term will come in the form of a diverse range of table olive recipes and prepa­ra­tions from across the Mediterranean Basin, accom­pa­nied by sto­ries of how these recipes shape and are shaped by the local com­mu­ni­ties that pre­pare them.

“But beyond num­bers and geo­graph­i­cal reach, our deeper mea­sure of suc­cess is emo­tional and cul­tural,” she said. ​“We want peo­ple to recon­nect with their roots and her­itage, and to redis­cover the value in some­thing as hum­ble as the table olive.” 

“If this project helps reframe the table olive not only as food, but as a shared Mediterranean trea­sure, one that car­ries mem­ory, iden­tity, and com­mu­nity, then we will have truly suc­ceeded in the long term,” Bou Dagher con­cluded.