Morocco and Origins – Global Adventures in Food and Archaeology

When I ask students to think about their favorite foods and then explore where and when the ingredients were domesticated, they are always surprised by something. Tomatoes are from the Americas, not Italy?! Potatoes are not from Ireland?! For most of human history, our cuisine has been limited by where we live. We eat what is locally available and, if we are lucky, sometimes some treats from further away brought in through trade and interaction. As such, when we talk about particular ethnic cuisine, understanding the origins of the ingredients can provide a window into the broader history of the region. We can explore questions such as “are they growing and eating local foodstuffs or exotic items?” “If exotic, does everyone have access to it?” “If not, who does and why?” “Who are they trading with?” And the list could go on.

Morocco Village Street, photo by my mom Janice, taken on her trip to Morocco

But before I begin to delve into that, I thought it wise to start with domestication.

Domestication is simply the process of modifying, through artificial selection, plants and animals to suit human needs, often to the extent that the plant or animal cannot survive without human intervention. You would be surprised how many plants and animals rely on us for reproduction (and other important things like sheering). People have been domesticating plants and animals for many thousands of years. Traces of domestication, imprinted into the plant remains we find during archaeological excavation (interested-read more about the science of palynology here https://www.environmentalscience.org/palynology ), have been found going back 10,000 years, and likely even longer than that. People have been producing food for a long time. In fact, pretty much everything we eat is domesticated. Scholars have even argued that the Amazon rainforest has been largely been domesticated (see Amazonia: The Historical Ecology of a Domesticated Landscape by Clark L. Erickson).

But why is understanding domestication important? Domestication can tell us about how people have interacted with their environment through time. It can tell us about the creative innovations people came up with to solve problems around food production (like how to get a plant to grow in the desert or how to tame a honey bee). It can tell us about values and traditions surrounding production and consumption. And it can tell us about the nature and extent of trade and interaction between groups across space and time. Archaeologists love plants. So without further ado, let’s journey to Morocco.

Berber guide in the desert. Photo by Janice on her trip to Morocco.

My first stop on the global adventure took me to Morocco for the simple reason that I couldn’t recall having ever eaten Moroccan food. And yet, Morocco is somewhere I have always wanted to visit. Morocco has a long and storied history, going back hundreds of thousands of years. It is a geographically diverse region, home to mountainous peaks, meandering coastlines, fertile plains, and the dry Sahara Desert. Cities and towns are often painted in vibrant colors, reflecting local clays (check out the pink city of Marrakech) and longstanding traditions (check out the blue city of Chefchaouen). It would be fair to say that Morocco is easily one of the photographic places in the world.

Culturally, Morocco is equally as diverse as its geography and colors. While Morocco is home to the Berbers (known to themselves as the Imazighen; singular, Amazigh; plural), the region has long been a zone of trade and interaction (Morocco is ideally located along a prominent trade route between Europe, Africa, and the Middle East) as well as invasions (such as the Arab invasion beginning in the 8th century, the 20th-century invasions of France and Spain, among many others), resulting in a sort of cultural hodgepodge.

The food scene of Morocco reflects its diversity on all fronts. Moroccans use a variety of foods and spices, such as harissa and ras el hanout, giving Moroccan dishes their distinctive savory, spicy, and warm characteristics. Moroccan food is also cooked using a variety of techniques, most notably the tagine. Deciding what Moroccan dish to cook was difficult, I want to try them all! However, based on local ingredient availability and my cooking vessels, I decided on spiced lamb, beghrir, meskouta cake, & mint tea (recipes and histories below).

Lamb Tagine with Mushrooms and Olives — A tagine-I will post a tagine recipe once I acquire one

Spiced Lamb. Lamb is a staple of Moroccan cuisine. Sheep, along with goats, were some of the earliest domesticated animals. They were first domesticated in Southwest Asia around 9,000 BCE. To make the lamb, Danielle took a leg (locally sourced from Colorado) and dry-rubbed it with a mixture of warm spices. While lamb has likely been a staple of Moroccan cuisine for thousands of years, our first evidence of a lamb dish comes from Mesopotamia. A Babylonian tablet, dated to 1730 BCE, contains the ingredients for a lamb stew. I shall have to try it sometime! Of the many spices we used on the lamb, cinnamon is perhaps the most interesting for Morrocan history. Egyptians have been using the spice since before 2,000 BCE (the close proximity of Egypt to Morocco suggests they likely had access to the spice as well). Its uses were wide and included perfuming bodies during the embalming process and to help in food preservation. Arab traders then transported cinnamon all over via various roads and trade networks, even making its way to Europe in the Middle Ages.

Beghrir: Beghrir (also known as Tirrifyn by local Berber populations). These are small, spongy, and holey pancakes made from a mixture of yeast, semolina, and regular flour (both are types of wheat domesticated in the Middle East around 10,000 BCE). A brief search of the internet suggests they have been made in North Africa as far back as 200 BCE, though early evidence seems minimal. The process of making Beghrir is fairly simple. The almost crepe-like batter spreads easily on a griddle, taking just a few minutes to cook. The result is a pancake with a bread-like taste and amazing texture. Traditional, these are served as a snack or dessert, accompanied by sweeteners such as honey.

Meskouta Cake (also called Kika): Yum. This orange, butter-less cake is simple to make and contains a natural sweetness that allows it to be served plain (or lightly sprinkled with honey or confectioners sugar). The cake takes less than an hour to make and is best served warm. Reading about this cake I learned several interesting facts: oranges were likely domesticated in Asia over 3,000 years ago but the sweeter oranges we eat today appear to have been domesticated much later in the Mediterranean. The cake itself likely dates back to the French and Spanish colonization of the Moroccan region in the 20th century. It became popular during France/Spain Colonization when butter and many other ingredients were hard to get.

Mint tea (the national drink of Morocco): Mint, the plant, is widespread. It is native to Eurasia, North America, southern Africa, and Australia. This drink is a green tea prepared with spearmint leaves and sugar, traditionally served warm (or cold if you are in Spain). The origins of the tea of not clear, but ethnohistoric records of it being consumed date back to the 18th century and, by the 20th century, it had become a staple of the region.

Bonus: I explored making a Moroccan Mint Tea Alcoholic Spritz. Combine 2 cups water, 1/2 sugar, 2 green tea bags, a sprig of mint, and cinnamon stick into a pot, and bring to a boil until it reduces by half.

Fill a pitcher with ice, add 16 oz sparkling water, 4 oz of the syrup, 4 oz of gin/vodka/rum, and some fresh mint and lime to garnish!