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, Maheeba (“Mabel”) and Mkhyal (“Michael”), were born in the Arne and Ein el-shara suburbs of Damascus, Syria, and migrated to the United States. Helen Corey was born on October 9, 1923 in Canton, Ohio, and lived there until she moved to Terre Haute, Indiana in 1946. 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.” 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.

The Antiochan Orthodox Church and Christian Lenten Cuisine

In her cookbooks, Corey prominently features dishes associated with Lent, when Christians in the Antiochan Orthodox Church and in many other Middle Eastern churches abstain from meat, poultry, dairy, and eggs during the forty days before Easter and in preparation for the Passion of Christ. Lenten dishes are either vegan or based on fish. Orthodox Christians follow the same guidelines on Wednesdays and Fridays, as well as smaller fasts throughout the year.

Career and Civic Engagement

Helen Corey published The Art of Syrian Cookery in 1962. Years later, she founded a press, called CharLyn Publishing, which then published her second major cookbook, Helen Corey’s Food From Biblical Lands in 1989, followed by Healthy Syrian and Lebanese Cooking in 2004. Corey produced a televised show inspired by Food From Biblical Lands in 1990 and a later documentary about Easter as observed in the Syrian Antiochian Orthodox Church Easter. She occasionally hosted television shows and often interviewed international guests. Her 2004 book Healthy Syrian and Lebanese Cooking received first place in the National Federation of Press Women, out of 1,700 books submitted.

Helen Corey’s Food From Biblical Lands was out of print until October 2016, when Echo Print Books and Media issued an updated version of the cookbook for the Middle Eastern Festival sponsored in Terre Haute, Indiana by St. George Social Center. Proceeds from the book sale benefited the associated St. George Orthodox Church.

Helen Corey worked for many years in municipal and state government. From 1948 to 1961 she was secretary to the mayor of Terre Haute and Indiana’s Young Democrat National Committeewoman. In November 1964, she was elected Reporter for the Supreme and Appellate Courts – and thereby the first Syrian American elected to public office in Indiana. At one time she also served on the Indiana Governor’s Commission on the Status of Women.

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. With five godchildren, Corey described herself as belonging to a close-knit family community.

Culinary Diplomacy

Culinary Diplomacy is the practice of promoting cultural links between people in different countries or communities through sharing foods and drinks - respective culinary repertoires – whether through published recipes, via film, or in restaurants or home kitchens, in ways that facilitate dialogue and mutual understanding. The 1960s and 1970s saw the emergence of Middle Eastern cookbooks tailored for a general American audience.

In that sense, Helen Corey actively participated in culinary diplomacy. In her best-seller the Art of Syrian cookery, she introduced her readers to Lebanese and Syrian recipes adapted for American kitchens, while explaining the regional or religious significance of the various dishes.  Corey especially emphasizes the biblical dimensions of Levantine cuisine. By offering a “culinary trip to the Land of the Bible”, her cookbooks, and later her television programs, tried to promote American public understanding of Middle Eastern culture.