The Lebanese Kitchen

Lore & Background

Salma Hage immigrated to the United Kingdom from Lebanon at age 25. She was the eldest of 12 children, and her mother was 13 when she was born. For almost 30 years, she worked as a cleaner and cook at the Nelson Hospital in Wimbledon and various care homes in southwest London. Her son approached Phaidon Press with a mock-up of a book of Lebanese cuisine by her and invited publishing executives to dine at their home; they were immediately impressed, and the book was subsequently published.

Reader's Guide

The Lebanese Kitchen is significant as a large-scale reference work for Lebanese home cooking, containing over 500 pages and multiple variations of classic dishes. Its publication story—originating from a family initiative rather than a professional chef—adds to its unique character. The book also features recipes from Greg Malouf and Anissa Helou. Reviews noted both its strengths and weaknesses: Jane Touzalin in The Washington Post praised the recipes as 'solid and satisfying' but criticized the lack of headnotes and overly optimistic preparation times. Chef Shaun Hill in The Caterer likened its scope to The Silver Spoon. The Metro praised it as a 'really generous compendium' but noted the lack of authorial voice. Alex Renton in The Times felt it should 'restore one of the great crossover cuisines to its rightful place' and that Hage deserved to be a 'Lebanese national hero.' The book's legacy lies in its thorough documentation of Lebanese cuisine and its unusual origin story.

Did You Know?

• The book was reissued in 2019 as The Lebanese Cookbook.
• It contains six versions of the Lebanese national dish kibbeh and eight versions of hummus.
• Salma Hage spent almost 30 years as a cleaner and cook at the Nelson Hospital in Wimbledon and various care homes.
• The book is illustrated with photographs of rural Lebanon.

Layers of History on the Lebanese Table

Lebanese cuisine carries the imprint of millennia of overlapping civilizations. Its foundations stretch back through Phoenician, Persian, Egyptian, Neo-Babylonian, Roman, Greek, Byzantine, Arab, and Ottoman periods, each layer adding something to the table. The Ottoman era, spanning from 1516 to 1918, left a particularly deep mark, embedding lamb and goat into everyday cooking. After World War I, French administration until Lebanon's 1943 independence brought pastries like eclairs, croissants, flan, and caramel custard into the local repertoire. A landmark in culinary literature is the 1885 Beirut-published cookbook by Khalil Sarkis, one of the earliest widely read Arabic cookbooks, which shaped Levantine cooking for decades afterward. More recently, the global Lebanese diaspora has fed new ingredients, spices, and techniques back into the tradition, keeping it dynamic both within Lebanon's borders and in communities around the world.

The Mezze: A Social Ritual in Small Bites

The mezze stands as perhaps the most distinctive social ritual of Lebanese dining. Drawing parallels to Spanish tapas, Romanian mezeluri, and Italian aperitivo, it is a spread of small dishes arranged before guests to create a landscape of color, flavor, texture, and aroma. In a family setting, the mezze might be just three or four items, but in a restaurant it can expand to anywhere from twenty to sixty plates, organized into regular or seafood categories. A full mezze might feature tabbouleh, fattoush, hummus, baba ghanoush, moutabal, kebbeh, kafta, falafel, sambusac, stuffed grape leaves, pickles, roasted nuts, olives, and condiments like toum and taratour. Diners typically eat in small bites, using flatbread as a utensil. This style of serving is more associated with entertaining and café culture than with everyday family meals, though it remains central to how Lebanon presents its food to the world.

Staples, Seasons & Regional Pride

At the heart of Lebanese cooking lie a handful of ingredients that appear across virtually every meal: garlic, olive oil, salt, lemon juice, chickpeas, and parsley. Whole grains, fresh fruits, vegetables, and seafood form the backbone of the diet, with poultry consumed more frequently than red meat, and lamb or goat chosen when red meat does appear. Cooking methods favor grilling, baking, or light sautéing in olive oil, while butter and cream are reserved almost exclusively for a few desserts. Regional pride shows in the food: South Lebanon is celebrated for its kibbe, the Beqaa Valley for meat pastries like sfiha, and North Lebanon along with Saida for its sweets. Seasonal availability dictates much of what is on the table, a rhythm inherited from the broader Eastern Mediterranean. Dishes like baba ghanouj, tabbouleh, falafel, and shawarma have become globally recognized, yet the meal still typically concludes with a plate of fresh fruit and a small cup of Lebanese coffee.

Preservation, Crisis & Global Reach

Mouneh, the seasonal practice of preparing and storing food for year-round use, is a defining feature of Lebanese culinary life. Households traditionally made bulgur, olive oil, labneh, tahini, pickles, jams, tomato paste, makdous, and awarma (a lamb confit) during late summer and early autumn, when produce was most abundant, storing them in earthenware jars and canvas sacks in cool cellars. Today, glass jars have largely replaced that older method. Beyond preservation, Lebanese cuisine has spread into cultures as far as Australia and Brazil, serving as both a source of identity and income for diaspora communities and as an investment opportunity for those seeking to expand globally. Yet economic hardship has tested the cuisine's accessibility: the Lebanese liquidity crisis drove the price of a kilogram of dessert from 24,000 to 100,000 pounds, eventually reaching roughly one-seventh of the minimum monthly wage, forcing families to skip traditional Ramadan sweets or pivot to simpler, more affordable options like qatayef.

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