Tiropita

Tiropita

Tiropita with garnish.
Place of origin	Greece
Main ingredients	phyllo, eggs, cheese
Cookbook: Tiropita   Media: Tiropita

Tiropita or tyropita (Greek: τυρóπιτα, "cheese-pie") is a Greek layered pastry made with layers of buttered phyllo and filled with a cheese-egg mixture. It may be an individual-size free-form wrapped shape, or a larger pie that is portioned.

History

The modern Greek tyropita is historically derived from the tyropatinum, which was a sweet custard developed by the ancient Greeks of Sicily consisting of eggs, ricotta cheese, and honey.

Other scholars suggest that the ancient Greek placenta cake (or plakous, πλακοῦς) and its Eastern Roman (Byzantine) descendant, plakountas tetyromenous (πλακούντας τετυρομένους, "cheesy placenta") and en tyritas plakountas (εν τυρίτας πλακούντας, "cheese-inserted placenta"), are the ancestors of modern tiropita (börek or banitsa). Cato the Elder included a recipe for placenta in his De Agri Cultura (160 BC):

Shape the placenta as follows: place a single row of tracta along the whole length of the base dough. This is then covered with the mixture [cheese and honey] from the mortar. Place another row of tracta on top and go on doing so until all the cheese and honey have been used up. Finish with a layer of tracta...place the placenta in the oven and put a preheated lid on top of it [...] When ready, honey is poured over the placenta.

Another theory is that layered dishes like tyropita have their origins in Turkish cuisine and may trace back to layered pan-fried breads developed by the Turks of Central Asia before their westward migration to Anatolia in the late Middle Ages (cf. Baklava).

See also

• Banitsa
• Börek
• Gibanica
• Placenta cake

References

Sources

• Faas, Patrick (2005). Around the Roman Table: Food and Feasting in Ancient Rome. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. ISBN 0226233472. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Musco, Tom (2003). UMass Journalism Sicily: A History of Sicilian Cuisine. Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Journalism Program. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Perry, Charles (2000). "6. The Taste for Layered Bread among the Nomadic Turks and the Central Asian Origins of Baklava". In Zubaida, Sami; Tapper, Richard; Roden, Claudia (eds.). A Taste of Thyme: Culinary Cultures of the Middle East. London and New York: Tauris Parke Paperbacks. pp. 87–92. ISBN 1860646034. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Salaman, Rena (1986). "The Case of the Missing Fish, or Dolmathon Prolegomena (1984)". In Davidson, Alan (ed.). Oxford Symposium on Food & Cookery 1984 & 1985, Cookery: Science, Lore and Books Proceedings. London: Prospect Books Limited. pp. 184–187. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Vryonis, Speros (1971). The Decline of Medieval Hellenism in Asia Minor and the Process of Islamization from the Eleventh through the Fifteenth Century. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. ISBN 978-0-52-001597-5. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)