Friday Squid Blogging: Squid in Byzantine Monk Cooking
Source: Schneier on Security
The Story
This is a very weird story about how squid stayed on the menu of Byzantine monks by falling between the cracks of dietary rules.
At Constantinople’s Monastery of Stoudios, the kitchen didn’t answer to appetite. It answered to the typikon, a manual for ensuring that nothing unexpected happened at mealtimes:
- Meat: forbidden
- Dairy: forbidden
- Eggs: forbidden
- Fish: feast‑day only
- Oil: regulated
But squid?
Squid had eight arms, no bones, and a gift for changing color. Nobody had bothered writing a regulation for that. This wasn’t a loophole born of legal creativity but an oversight rooted in taxonomic confusion. Medieval monks, confronted with a creature that was neither fish nor fowl, gave up and let it pass.
In a kitchen governed by prohibitions, the safest ingredient was the one that caused the least disturbance. Squid entered not with applause, but with a shrug.
Bonus Stuffed Squid Recipe
Bonus stuffed squid recipe at the end.