[Sca-cooks] Olive oil varieties

galefridus at optimum.net galefridus at optimum.net
Wed Apr 17 10:55:36 PDT 2013


About a week or so ago, there was a brief mention of types of olive oil -- a believe it Cariadoc mentioned it in response to a question, and stated that Annals of the Caliphs' Kitchen lists several varieties of olive oil. 
I though I'd add a bit to the conversation -- I recently stumbled across the multi-volume treatise _Studies in Ancient Technology_, by R.J. Forbes. Volume 3 of this series contains several pages discussing olive oil production in antiquity (pp. 101-104). These pages state that the best oil was derived from the liquid extracted from the first pressing. However, the pulp was saved and subjected to several subsequent pressings, each producing oil of lower quality than the one before. While fairly brief, the discussion was quite interesting -- makes me wish I lived someplace where olives were more easily and cheaply obtained, so I could experiment with pressing my own olive oil.
-- Galefridus



More information about the Sca-cooks mailing list