tapenade

Tapenade is a Provençal name for a spread, condiment and culinary ingredient consisting of puréed or finely chopped olives, capers, and sometimes anchovies. Vegan versions that are available commercially do not contain anchovies. Tapenade's name comes from the Provençal word for capers, tapenas. It is a popular food in the south of France, where it is generally eaten as an hors d'œuvre spread on bread, with fish, in salads, and sometimes used to stuff poultry for the main course. History of similar dishes Olive-based dishes with anchovies or vinegar are ubiquitous in Italian cuisine, documented in ancient Roman cookbooks dating back more than a thousand years before the appearance of the Occitan word tapenade. One of the earliest known of such Italian recipes, Olivarum conditurae, appears in Columella's De re Rustica written in the first century AD. Cato the Elder (234–149 B.C.) also includes a recipe for epityrum, an olive spread very much like a tapenade, in chapter 119 of his On Agriculture. The use of capers is the hallmark of recipes for tapenade. According to the culinary works of Provençal chefs Jean-Baptiste Reboul and Charles Julliard, the tapenade was created in 1880 by chef Meynier of the restaurant La Maison Dorée in Marseille. He pounded together an equal amount (200 grams) of capers and black olives to garnish the hard-boiled egg halves, then incorporated anchovy fillets and marinated tuna (100 grams each). This condiment composition was then tied with a whisk after adding spices, pepper, olive oil, and two glasses of cognac.