Pickling – Roman style To keep olives, fresh from the tree, in a manner enabling you to make oil from them any time you desire just place them [in brine]. Having been kep thus for some time the olives may be used as if they had just come off the tree fresh if you desire to make green oil of them.”
The Romans invented curing olives with lye. They obtained lye from wood ashes.
There is extensive historical evidence for the use of sea water in curing olives [Palladius and Pliny, cited in 36], and it is traditionally still used in some Mediterranean regions36,47. Hishuley Carmel and Kfar Samir were both coastal settlements with easy access to salt and to sea water.
Pound slightly the olives in the mortar to break their skins. Let them soak in water for a week, changing the water three or four times a day. Drain the olives and put them in a jar, adding the salt and lentisk and fennel seeds.
Another method for curing olives that has been lost to time was the ancient technique applied to green olives, which were soaked in sea water in order that their bitterness leach out, then kept in clay jugs filled with wine must.
Raw olives were most likely eaten mixed with wine or vinegar for maximum nutrition as well.
In ancient Greece, they used stone weights, hung from wooden beams, to crush the olives and form the olive pulp. It was then kneaded and poured from stone bases into special containers for the separation of virgin olive oil from water.
The oil produced from olive trees in Spain's Castellón Province was once consumed by Roman soldiers. In Castellón Province, Spain, you'll see evidence of Roman life everywhere.
Ancient Rome
Soaps were not around in the times of the Roman Empire. Instead when Romans went to bathe they rubbed olive oil all over their bodies and then scraped it off with a strigil, carrying away all the dirt and grime with it and leaving the skin silky and moisturized.
Olive oil was also a big hit. It made up at least 12% of calories consumed at Herculaneum, and perhaps much more. The find supports historical sources indicating the average Roman consumed 20 liters of oil each year, and that the oil was one of the most significant fat sources in the Roman diet.
To prepare olives for water curing, you must first individually cut or crack each olive so that the bitter oleuropein can more easily leach out. The prepared olives are soaked in water and the water is changed daily over a week or more, depending on the olive style and the desired level of bitterness.
They are cured in salt. The oil comes next.
Brine-curing is easy, but takes a long time. You make a brine of 1/4 cup kosher salt (I use Diamond Crystal) to 4 cups water, plus 1/2 cup of vinegar: white wine, cider or simple white vinegar. Submerge the olives in this brine and top with cheesecloth or something else to keep them underwater. Do not cut them.
To cure the olives, they need to rest in a saltwater brine for a few months. You need a 3:1 ratio of olives to saltwater brine. For example, for every full bucket of olives, you'll need about a third of a bucket of brine. Find a food-grade container or bucket/s large enough to fit all your olives.
Scholars believe the ancient olive oil was produced by a process where olives were placed in woven mats and squeezed, with the oil collected in vats.
Alongside death, the pomegranate symbolised fertility in Ancient Greece and Rome.
Lard (Strutto): Although it is disappearing, lard was widely used in traditional Italian cooking, especially among the poor and in regions where there was little olive oil production.
The Romans didn't use soap: they cleaned themselves with olive oil and some sand to remove dead skin cells. Soap supposedly is a Gallic or Germanic invention. The soap was made of animal fats or olive oil and lye of wood ash or sodium hydroxide.
Not even the Greeks and Romans, who pioneered running water and public baths, used soap to clean their bodies. Instead, men and women immersed themselves in water baths and then smeared their bodies with scented olive oils. They used a metal or reed scraper called a strigil to remove any remaining oil or grime.
A glass bottle almost full with ancient olive oil was discovered in a Roman town called Herculaneum, near modern Naples. It was found in a 2,000 year old bottle that dates back to 79 A.D.
Hence the oil proved to be a revered product both in classical Greece and Ancient Rome and was used as an indispensable ingredient in almost all foods. After eating some olives as an appetizer, oil, bread, wine and honey were then – and are still now in many cases-, the mainstay of nutrition and Mediterranean diet.
As to which country makes the best olive oil, there's not a clear-cut answer. Italy, Spain, and Greece are probably the three most well-known, though Croatia and Turkey have also produced some of the highest rated oils in recent years.
Before 1900, these oils were scarcely used. People used fats that could easily be extracted from food, like tallow, lard, butter, olive oil, and coconut oil. Seed and vegetable oils were used in paints and as furniture polish, until the development of chemical extraction methods made them cheaper and easier to obtain.
Deuteronomy 28:38–40
You shall have olive trees throughout all your territory, but you shall not anoint yourself with the oil; for your olives shall drop off. The “seed” here refers to grain and in the “vineyards”, you have wine.
The earliest amphorae—ancient oil containers—to be found are from the palace of Knossos, the most important in the city on Crete (1600 BC). Not only were these containers used to store olive oil (a custom that remains intact to date), but they also served as a valuable currency throughout the Mediterranean.