Around the end of September, the ancient Greeks celebrated the Eleusinian Mysteries, one of the main festivals of the year, dedicated to the goddess Demeter, in which it was commemorated the renewal of life and the rebirth of nature.

We know little about the contents of such mysteries and the celebrations, being the initiated obliged to silence, but we know the name of the ritual beverage consumed by the faithful at the end of a period of fast, which was connected with the fast of Demeter herself narrated in the myths, in particular in a fascinating, archaic source: the Homeric Hymns. The name of this beverage was kykeon, a word that means “mixture”.

Kykeon appears in many Greek texts: in the Homeric works (Iliad, Odyssey, and Hymn to Demeter), in the medical books (in particular the Corpus Hippocraticum, but Galen offers important information about its main component, alphita), but also in the comedy and satirical books (Characters by Theophrastus and Peace by Aristophanes, texts in which it is mentioned a kykeon identical to the one prepared in the Hymn).
It is not immediate to understand exactly what kykeon is. In this article, we will analyze the medical and mythological sources, narrating the myths and the contexts in which this word appears and, naturally, providing a historical reconstruction of this beverage, both sacred and medicinal, so important in ancient Greek culture.

Today we prepare two recipes for kykeon, an ancient Greek ritual beverage connected with the Eleusinian Mysteries and Greek myths, following the descriptions that we find in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter and the Iliad.

Independently from the culinary point of view, these two recipes are extremely interesting for all the tradition and history they refer to, which cross all the history of ancient Greece from times that blend into the age of myth.

Watch the video for more about the Kykeon recipe:

Ingredients:

1st recipe: Hymn to Demeter’s

• kykeon whole-grain barley

• pennyroyal

2nd recipe: Iliad’s kykeon

• whole-grain barley

• wine

• aged goat cheese