By Stephanie Sorosiak

A few weeks ago I sat with my mom amongst a pile of oil-stained pieces of paper. They were from my grandmother’s recipe box, and to our dismay, mostly written illegibly. My yiayia referred to these when making her most popular dishes, but to us it was a jumbled mix of misspelled and slang words. As we struggled to decipher one thing from another, I realized that my yiayia didn’t document these recipes for anyone else. This cooking space was entirely hers. 

Since her passing I have taken on the task of translating, interpreting, and recreating my yiayia’s recipes. This is partly because I love food history and recipe research, but it’s also to better understand their place in my life. The recipes our elders leave behind impose a significant influence on our cultural ties. 

Fredrik Barth, a social anthropologist known for his text Ethnic Groups and Boundaries, argued that ethnic groups are more relatively defined by the boundaries they create rather than the contents within each group.¹ It’s the boundaries separating one group from another that maintain and strengthen a group’s ethnic identity. As our world continues to globalize and adapt, these conversations about ethnicity grow more complex. These complexities make me wonder if my Greek heritage can maintain its cultural boundaries as we shift through social, economic, political, and geographical changes. My family, like millions of others, shares the same sentiments and emotional attachments to our homelands. But what of our traditions, and ultimately our cultural identities? Can they remain relevant now that we’ve settled elsewhere?

Society’s ethnic boundary lines are inevitably softening as more cultures co-mingle, but I view family recipes as a defining glue that keeps these boundaries intact. Through the grief of my yiayia’s passing I feel an increased desire to master what she left behind. What started as a simple project of reading through recipe cards unearthed a lot more. As her granddaughter, and  a lover of food and the importance it carries, I feel it is my duty to honor her in the best way I know how. Ultimately I want to know how her cooking choices, both from the ingredients she used and how they were executed, created one of my favorite cookies called finikia. 

So what are finikia? Well to start, most of Greece calls them melomakarona. The name ‘finikia’ is used in regions closer to Turkey, a relationship my elders denied but is constantly referenced in our family’s recipe names. Finikia are a buttery cookie soaked in a spiced syrup typically served around the holidays, but there is not a time of year when I don’t remember eating these. At large gatherings when there were several plates of the same cookie, I could always pick out which ones were my yiayia’s. Her finikia were tender on the outside with a slight crumble in the middle. They were soaked in the right amount of orange and cinnamon syrup and were topped with just enough crushed walnuts. My yiayia’s finikia were simply the best, but it was only after I read and recreated her recipe that I understood her special techniques. 

Here are some of my yiayia’s adaptations which I believe make her finikia, hers: 

1. Using a cheese grater to perforate the dough balls. Most recipes will instruct you to prick the dough with a fork, but my yiayia rolled them against the coarse side of a grater to create the most uniform perforation. This allows for adequate soaking after they bake. 
2. A longer bake time. My yiayia was known to overcook everything – vegetables, poultry, and these cookies. Most recipes average a 15 minute bake time, but her finikia need around 30-35 minutes at 350ºF to achieve the signature golden color. 
3. A longer long soak time. This probably has to do with how dry the cookies become from doubling the bake time, but allowing the cookies to soak in that delicious spiced honey syrup a tad longer (30-45 seconds), gets them even more fragrant and soft.
4. Pastel cupcake liners. My yiayia never swayed from serving finikia in pink and yellow baking cups. While I’ve used other colors, they don’t provide the same nostalgia. 

My grandmother came from Rhodes, Greece, to the United States in the 1950s, a period that also saw the standardization of electric appliances, prepackaged products, and fast-food chains. These heavily influenced the American eating experience, but to a newly emigrated Greek? Well, it’s hard to say. My grandparents made do with what they had while constantly navigating a language barrier, economic and social differences, and a palette for foods from a distant land. But what’s most interesting is how in the decades that followed, my yiaiya’s cooking became synonymous with what it means for us to be Greek. Even through the mass-produced conveniences that shaped her cooking choices, my family views her recipes as an authentic connection to our heritage. The choices my yiayia made in the kitchen may have seemed insignificant to her, but this is what shaped my cultural boundary. 

Embarking on this project got me thinking about the recent rise in diasporic food media – authors eager to share the stories of their family’s recipes but admitting to the unconventional swaps that their elders used once they arrived in the States. These cookbooks represent the immigrant movement, an ability to welcome adaptations while maintaining a strong relationship with specific cultural boundaries. My yiayia’s recipes are rooted in traditional Greek cuisine but with American swaps like using Mazola oil instead of olive. This is what it means to be a Greek-American. It’s something my yiayia naturally adapted to, one batch of finikia at a time. 

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1. Barth, F. (Ed.). (1969). Ethnic groups and boundaries: The social organization of culture difference. Universitetsforlaget / Little, Brown. ↩︎

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Stephanie is a New England native and a recent graduate with her Master’s in Gastronomy from Boston University. She focuses on the intersection of personal customs, cultural history, and food writing. She’s been in the hospitality industry for over a decade and through her education now studies group’s foodways and their food choices to enhance restaurant business. Stephanie hopes to publish more of her work including a cookbook in the future. She currently lives in Massachusetts.