Helen Corey

"Chick Pea Sesame Dip" (Homos bi Tahini) made according to the recipe in Helen Corey's Food from Biblical Lands cookbook (1989), p. 4. Pomegranate seeds and parsley garnish the hummus. The author cites Exodus 38:33-34, which begins, "On its hem you shall make pomegranates of blue and purple and scarlet yarns..." (English Standard Version)

Helen Corey (born October 9, 1923) is a Syrian-American cookbook author, television producer, and educator.  She was the first Syrian-American woman to hold elected office in Indiana. Her books, including the bestseller entitled  The Art of Syrian Cookery (1962) and Helen Corey's Food from Biblical Lands (1989), popularized Levantine Arab cuisine among U.S. audiences.  Corey stressed the biblical origins of Middle Eastern cuisine, embraced food as a vehicle for cross-cultural and inter-faith dialogue, and promoted awareness of Eastern Christianity in the United States, by discussing her family's culture in the Antiochian Orthodox Church.  She was a pioneer in the development of culinary diplomacy.

Family Background

Helen Corey’s parents, Mahiba (“Mabel”) and Mkhyal (“Michael”), were born in the Arne and Ein el-shara suburbs of Damascus, Syria, and migrated to the United States. (1)(3) Helen Corey was born on October 9, 1923 in Canton, Ohio, and lived there until she moved to Terre Haute, Indiana in 1946. (13) She and her family were part of a wave of Arabic immigrants who migrated to Terre Haute during the early twentieth century and who settled there due to the city’s “potential for prosperity through farming, mining and a growing manufacturing base.” (7) As early as 1927, the town had a sufficiently substantial Syrian Christian community that its members wrote and notarized a constitution for its church, St. George Orthodox Church. In 2018, Corey participated in a ceremony commemorating a historical marker for “Little Syria on the Wabash”, the site of the original twentieth-century immigrant Syrian neighborhoods of Terre Haute.

Through her cookbooks, television show, and other public programs, she aimed to raise public awareness about Syrian culture and to share information on the Antiochian Orthodox Church’s feast and fast days. (2) With five godchildren, Corey described herself as belonging to a close-knit family community. (7)