Every Christmas, gingerbread and melomakaroni are not missing from any home. Traditional, traditional holiday treats – in various recipes and variations – have their due, and usually, no one can eat just one.

Actually, melomakaronas and kourabiedes are not “local” sweets, in the sense of the Greek borders.

The Asia Minor refugees brought them, like so many other elements of their traditions and culture, which were finally integrated into the Greek tradition.

His name curabier comes from Qurabiya in Azeri, Kurabiye, in Turkish and means cookie.

Asia Minor refugees from Karvali in Cappadocia created in the Prefecture of Kavala in 1924 the Nea Karvali and they transferred the traditional recipe of kourabies of Asia Minor. So today in Greece the most famous traditional kourabiedes are those of Nea Karvali.

The honey macaroons are etymologically of ancient Greek origin. Dictionaries state that the word “macaroni” is derived from the medieval Greek word “makaronia” (it was a funeral dinner based on pasta, where the dead were blessed).

The macaroni, in turn, comes from the ancient Greek word “makaria”, which was none other than psychopita, that is, a piece of bread, in the shape of the modern melomakaronos, which was offered after the funeral.

Later, when the macaria was bathed in honey syrup it was called: honey+blessing = melomakarono and was established as a sweet of the Twelve Days, mainly by the Asia Minor Greeks and under the name “palm trees».

The Latins and later the Italians used the word macaroni as maccarone which eventually came to mean spaghetti. Finally, from the Middle Ages onwards in France and England, a type of almond cookie was called a “macaroon” (now known to everyone as “macaron”).

With information from the Asia Minor Students’ Union