Christmas season is officially open! It’s high time to cheer up with festive decoration, gold candles and sparkling lights. And sweets! Lots of sweets! Like my perfect melomakarona, made, formed and siruped according to the original recipe of my great grand mothers. Melomakarona came to Greece with the Greeks who forcefully left Asia Minor in 1922. I’m sure the grannies did not had time to pack the recipe in the luggage when they were escaping the war and the genocide. And moreover, the mostly illiterate housewives of the times knew everything by heart: the recipes, the bible, the liturgy, the traditions. One member of the large families was entitled to keep in mind the genealogy tree… In our family, that was my grand father from my father side.
Melomakarona (honey-noodles) is made of flour, sugar, oil, cinnamon & gloves, walnuts and fresh orange juice and brandy. After baked, they dive in a bath of honey sirup.
Melomakarona was a traditional Christmas sweet for the Greeks of Asia Minor. According to the tradition they were called “Finikia” (Φοινίκια) because their tiny-knob decoration and was resembling the surface of the palm tree and their shape was resembling the dates. I suppose, the tradition had to do with the symbolism of the palm in Eastern Mediterranean and Middle East, where the tree stands for victory, peace and eternal life.
Whatever the origin of Melomakrarona was, my mother always used to mumble around the middle of December “It’s time to make Finikia!”
My original recipe from Asia Minor you will find here, in My Perfect Greek Melomakarona, first posted on 22. December 2010.
PS I had almost forgot to repost the recipe on the occasion of the days, until some Greek-Turkish friends on Twitter baked a nice bunch of Melomakarona yesterday and gave credits to my recipe.
As the friends live in Izmir (Turkey) all I can say is that Melomakarona returned to its place of origin 🙂
everyone knows that the king of cuisine was asia minor/istanbul! the foods of greece were much simpler, and peasant based – thank god the refugees brought their culinary skills with them.
but on the count of melomakarona, i believe you are wrong in saying that the refugees introduced their making to greece. one, my grandmother in plaka was making them in the early 1930’s, and i don’t believe she was actively sharing recipes back then…and more importantly, it is eaten in every corner of greece – and there is a local tradition associated with it as well…
actually, my wife and i always say that in its perfect simplicity – it is probably a very ancient sweet that has survived since antiquity in all regions where greek people lived…
wherever I checked the origin is given as Asia Minor and given the very old tradition of broader Middle East to use sirup for sweets, I think it’s more than possible… It’s a simple sweet that can be eaten also during pre Christmas Lent as it contains absolute no diary products. My great grandmother did was saying that back then (south of Izmir, before the 1920’s melomakarona were soaked in a sirup based on cooked petimezi (from grapes).
It was certainly worth of mouth that made your grandma in Plaka in the early 1930’s make melomakarona.