Layer upon layer of paper-thin phyllo pastry: brushed with olive oil, filled with wilted spinach, crumbled feta, dill and egg: baked until the pastry shatters into golden shards at the touch. Spanakopita is Greece's most famous pie and one of the world's great wheat preparations: flour so finely worked it becomes translucent, the vehicle for a filling that is purely Mediterranean.
Origin: Greece & the Balkans
From the journey of Wheat.
Phyllo (from the Greek for 'leaf', meaning ultra-thin wheat pastry made by skilled hands stretching a single ball of dough across a table until it is as thin as parchment) is one of the technical pinnacles of wheat cookery. The technique almost certainly arrived via Ottoman kitchens, which in turn inherited it from Persian and Central Asian pastry traditions. The Greeks adopted it entirely, making it the foundation of their entire sweet and savoury pie culture (pites). Spanakopita became the canonical Greek pie, made across the Aegean, the Balkans and the diaspora.
Mapping Culinary History
To explore — select an ingredient below.
To explore — select an ingredient below · click any location dot on the map for recipes and stories · browse the information panel on the right · trace the full journey on the timeline.
Journey Point Map Key