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Olive Odyssey: Searching for the Secrets of the Fruit that Seduced the World
This Mediterranean travel memoir offers “an engaging mix of history, food travelogue, and botany lesson . . . There is much to enjoy here” (Library Journal). Inspired by her Syrian forebears’ intimate relationship with the olive, Julie Angus embarks on a voyage around the Mediterranean to unlock the secrets of the fruit that meant so much to them. Accompanied by her husband and their ten-month-old son, Angus collects samples from ancient trees to determine where the first olive tree originated; feasts on inky black tapenades and codfish drizzled with olive oil, among many other delights; witnesses the harvesting of olives in Greece; and visits perhaps the oldest olive tree in the world, on Crete. The result is a fascinating history and biography of this most influential and irresistible fruit. “It is a pleasure to try to keep up with this book; like its author, it covers an enormous amount of territory.” —Christopher Bakken, Wall Street Journal
348 pages, Kindle Edition
First published April 18, 2014
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178 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
October 20, 2025
This book took forever for me to read, but I enjoyed a lot of it. Specifically, Julie is a great travel writer, and her stories of sailing the Mediterranean made me miss my time in the South of France SO much. The history of olives and description of the growing and harvesting and all the different varieties was also super interesting. I got lost at some of the more sciencey sections, though, and the technical aspects. Fascinating, I'm sure, but I struggled with it. Overall, it was an excellent interesting read.
March 5, 2026
When I looked for a travel book to read, most of the books I found read more like a train schedule than anything very interesting. And novels in which people were traveling just didn’t interest me. Since I come from Italy, a Mediterranean country in which olive growing is practically revered, I thought I’d like this book. In it, Julia Angus, her husband Colin, and their ten-month-old son, Leif set sail on the Mediterranean to learn the history of the olive, the fruit that’s celebrated in the cuisine—and life—of every country that borders the warm, sunny waters of the sea.
Lest you think I didn’t actually read a book on travel and got off easy with a recipe book, instead, such is not the case. While this book does talk about Mediterranean cuisine, it’s not a cookbook. Ms. Angus gives us a history and science of the olive tree as well as a tour of the countries that border the Mediterranean and how their cuisine came about.
In the section on the history and science of the olive tree, Ms. Angus attempts to discover where the olive tree was first domesticated. In attempting to construct a hypothesis, the Angus family sailed around the Mediterranean, collecting samples from every ancient wild and domesticated olive tree, and then comparing the olive trees of the Middle East with those of the Europe. There were no boats sailing to the very eastern end of the Mediterranean when Ms. Angus was doing her research, but she did fly to Israel and the West Bank and took samples of twigs, fruit, and bark for working biologists and botanists to analyze. The analysis showed what most of us probably suspect: The olive tree was first domesticated in the Middle East.
When the Angus family set sail from the western end of the Mediterranean, they were a little anxious. Both Julia and Colin are experienced sailors (in 2006, the couple crossed the Atlantic in a rowboat), but they were somewhat worried that little Leif, at ten-months, might not take to sailing as well as they hoped. Thankfully, he seemed to love it as much as his adventurous parents. He’d been a fussy baby at home, but he was happy as the proverbial clam on the Mediterranean voyage, much to his parents’ delight. (I know I’d never take a baby on a sailboat cruise of the Mediterranean.)
The Angus family sampled olives at famous cities like Barcelona and Cannes, and they gave their readers a look at those beautiful cities, but they also went to many remote, out-of-the-tourist-way places that most people have probably never heard of. Some of the villages the Angus family visited are so remote that they seem not to have changed for hundreds of years. And everywhere the family visited, Julia was collecting samples of twigs, bark, and fruit, while the entire family was busy tasting the many wonderful dishes incorporating olives.
I found it interesting that she gave us a detailed, but rather flat, description of what is probably the oldest producing olive tree on Earth: It’s a tree in the village of Vouves, on the Greek island of Crete. The tree is estimated to be between 2,000 and 4,000 years old, and it is a protected natural monument, as it should be. We have an ancient tree in Italy that still produces as well. It’s called S’Ozzastru, or Great Patriarch in English. It is a wild olive tree, with domesticated grafts, as opposed to the domesticated one on Crete, and is located near Lake Liscia in Luras, on the island of Sardinia. Our tree is approximately 3,000 to 4,000 years old. Like other olive trees, it’s lovely, with it’s lacy silvery green leaves that contrast so elegantly with its twisted trunk.
The Fench historian, Fernand Braudel suggested that geography, climate, and diet are the greatest influencers of a nation’s culture. I’m not sure I agree with that, since the Mediterranean countries are quite diverse, but I do know, discounting the sea, they are all united by one thing—the olive—which has been used as more than just a food.
When Angus is explaining the history of the olive, she points out that all through the region it was used for much more than just a food. It was used as fuel, in industry, as a base for perfumes, to make soap, shampoo, hair conditioners, and skin moisturizers, and it has a deep religious significance for all three of the monotheistic religions: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.
Olive oil has always been touted as the healthiest of oils to use in cooking, but folklore says it has widespread—and debatable—healing powers as well. People used to boil bats in olive oil to rid themselves of a hernia; lizards boiled in olive oil were thought to cure baldness. Today, of course, people who hold the above two beliefs are few and far between, but olive oil still has many healthful properties. Today, medical science believes a regular, moderate intake of olive oil can reduce cardiovascular disease, help in the management of diabetes, help to prevent cancer, and maybe prevent or slow down the progression of Alzheimer’s disease. In short, olive oil is good for us. Just don’t ingest much of it at once if you’re not used to it, or you may suffer some nasty GI effects and a lot of discomfort.. Olive oil is something you need to build up a tolerance to.
Of course, if you want the greatest health benefits, you have to use “extra virgin olive oil,” also known as EVOO. This means only the oil at the first pressing is used, and no chemicals or other additives used, and no extreme heat. (I always use an olive oil that I’ve found to be trustworthy, but even that is no guarantee, though barring pressing your own, it’s as close as you can get.) There have been companies who’ve deliberately mislabeled their olive oils, the most egregious being a company in 1980s Spain, who watered down their oil with rapeseed containing aniline, a coal tar extract. This for-profit killed approximately 700 Spainards and sickened others. Angus suggests that the best test for the quality of olive oils is your own palate, but I think that’s too difficult and too unreliable.
I got the idea that Angus is much more at home writing about food and cooking than about travel. Angus’s roots are Syrian, and in what is probably the best section of the book, she describes a meal cooked by her aunt and uncle in Aleppo when she visited in the past. (Due to political tensions, she did not visit Syria during this trip.) Angus writes: Their faux-wood table with its skinny aluminum legs struggled under the weight of pomegranate-infused lamb stew; chicken baked in a creamy yogurt sauce; salad topped with fried triangles of pita bread; bowls of steaming lentil soup; and platters of cigarlike rolls of meat and rice tightly wrapped in vine leaves, stuffed baby eggplant, and torpedo-shaped patties of fried bulgur and ground beef known as kibbeh. (There are almost 80 varieties of kibbeh.) I’m no expert on Syrian cuisine, but I do know it’s been heavily influenced by Ottoman, Persian, and Armenian foods, and Syrian cooks love to use heavy seasonings, pomegranate molasses, and pistachios. I’ve had Aleppo Soup,which is an ancient recipe using both olive and laurel oils. When I ate meat, I loved Kabab Karaz, which is lamb with sour cherries, and one of my favorites is Muhammara, a dip I’m having today (Super Bowl Sunday!) that is characterized by roasted red peppers, walnuts, and pomegranate molasses, and yes, olive oil.
I could have loved this book, but Angus seemed to fall down a bit on the sections describing the beautiful world of the Mediterranean. The writing is especially flat in those sections, and it was for those sections that I read the book. They are long enough, no problem there, but they are flat and can get boring pretty fast. She could have given us a much more lively picture of the sun-drenched Mediterranean world. I wanted to be immersed in the sights and sounds and smells of the Mediterranean, and the writing was just…flat. Not immersive at all, and this was, primarily, a travel book. In the end I thought this book was okay, but I also felt it could have been much better.
2.5/5
Recommended: No, not unless you’re someone who really needs to know everything about olives.
Edit: In very light print near the top, it says I read this book two times. No, I read it only once. For some reason, when I edit, it marks it down as read, instead. I don't think it goes past two, though, which, to me, is very strange. I almost always end up editing a review multiple times. This is the third edit on this review.
Lest you think I didn’t actually read a book on travel and got off easy with a recipe book, instead, such is not the case. While this book does talk about Mediterranean cuisine, it’s not a cookbook. Ms. Angus gives us a history and science of the olive tree as well as a tour of the countries that border the Mediterranean and how their cuisine came about.
In the section on the history and science of the olive tree, Ms. Angus attempts to discover where the olive tree was first domesticated. In attempting to construct a hypothesis, the Angus family sailed around the Mediterranean, collecting samples from every ancient wild and domesticated olive tree, and then comparing the olive trees of the Middle East with those of the Europe. There were no boats sailing to the very eastern end of the Mediterranean when Ms. Angus was doing her research, but she did fly to Israel and the West Bank and took samples of twigs, fruit, and bark for working biologists and botanists to analyze. The analysis showed what most of us probably suspect: The olive tree was first domesticated in the Middle East.
When the Angus family set sail from the western end of the Mediterranean, they were a little anxious. Both Julia and Colin are experienced sailors (in 2006, the couple crossed the Atlantic in a rowboat), but they were somewhat worried that little Leif, at ten-months, might not take to sailing as well as they hoped. Thankfully, he seemed to love it as much as his adventurous parents. He’d been a fussy baby at home, but he was happy as the proverbial clam on the Mediterranean voyage, much to his parents’ delight. (I know I’d never take a baby on a sailboat cruise of the Mediterranean.)
The Angus family sampled olives at famous cities like Barcelona and Cannes, and they gave their readers a look at those beautiful cities, but they also went to many remote, out-of-the-tourist-way places that most people have probably never heard of. Some of the villages the Angus family visited are so remote that they seem not to have changed for hundreds of years. And everywhere the family visited, Julia was collecting samples of twigs, bark, and fruit, while the entire family was busy tasting the many wonderful dishes incorporating olives.
I found it interesting that she gave us a detailed, but rather flat, description of what is probably the oldest producing olive tree on Earth: It’s a tree in the village of Vouves, on the Greek island of Crete. The tree is estimated to be between 2,000 and 4,000 years old, and it is a protected natural monument, as it should be. We have an ancient tree in Italy that still produces as well. It’s called S’Ozzastru, or Great Patriarch in English. It is a wild olive tree, with domesticated grafts, as opposed to the domesticated one on Crete, and is located near Lake Liscia in Luras, on the island of Sardinia. Our tree is approximately 3,000 to 4,000 years old. Like other olive trees, it’s lovely, with it’s lacy silvery green leaves that contrast so elegantly with its twisted trunk.
The Fench historian, Fernand Braudel suggested that geography, climate, and diet are the greatest influencers of a nation’s culture. I’m not sure I agree with that, since the Mediterranean countries are quite diverse, but I do know, discounting the sea, they are all united by one thing—the olive—which has been used as more than just a food.
When Angus is explaining the history of the olive, she points out that all through the region it was used for much more than just a food. It was used as fuel, in industry, as a base for perfumes, to make soap, shampoo, hair conditioners, and skin moisturizers, and it has a deep religious significance for all three of the monotheistic religions: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.
Olive oil has always been touted as the healthiest of oils to use in cooking, but folklore says it has widespread—and debatable—healing powers as well. People used to boil bats in olive oil to rid themselves of a hernia; lizards boiled in olive oil were thought to cure baldness. Today, of course, people who hold the above two beliefs are few and far between, but olive oil still has many healthful properties. Today, medical science believes a regular, moderate intake of olive oil can reduce cardiovascular disease, help in the management of diabetes, help to prevent cancer, and maybe prevent or slow down the progression of Alzheimer’s disease. In short, olive oil is good for us. Just don’t ingest much of it at once if you’re not used to it, or you may suffer some nasty GI effects and a lot of discomfort.. Olive oil is something you need to build up a tolerance to.
Of course, if you want the greatest health benefits, you have to use “extra virgin olive oil,” also known as EVOO. This means only the oil at the first pressing is used, and no chemicals or other additives used, and no extreme heat. (I always use an olive oil that I’ve found to be trustworthy, but even that is no guarantee, though barring pressing your own, it’s as close as you can get.) There have been companies who’ve deliberately mislabeled their olive oils, the most egregious being a company in 1980s Spain, who watered down their oil with rapeseed containing aniline, a coal tar extract. This for-profit killed approximately 700 Spainards and sickened others. Angus suggests that the best test for the quality of olive oils is your own palate, but I think that’s too difficult and too unreliable.
I got the idea that Angus is much more at home writing about food and cooking than about travel. Angus’s roots are Syrian, and in what is probably the best section of the book, she describes a meal cooked by her aunt and uncle in Aleppo when she visited in the past. (Due to political tensions, she did not visit Syria during this trip.) Angus writes: Their faux-wood table with its skinny aluminum legs struggled under the weight of pomegranate-infused lamb stew; chicken baked in a creamy yogurt sauce; salad topped with fried triangles of pita bread; bowls of steaming lentil soup; and platters of cigarlike rolls of meat and rice tightly wrapped in vine leaves, stuffed baby eggplant, and torpedo-shaped patties of fried bulgur and ground beef known as kibbeh. (There are almost 80 varieties of kibbeh.) I’m no expert on Syrian cuisine, but I do know it’s been heavily influenced by Ottoman, Persian, and Armenian foods, and Syrian cooks love to use heavy seasonings, pomegranate molasses, and pistachios. I’ve had Aleppo Soup,which is an ancient recipe using both olive and laurel oils. When I ate meat, I loved Kabab Karaz, which is lamb with sour cherries, and one of my favorites is Muhammara, a dip I’m having today (Super Bowl Sunday!) that is characterized by roasted red peppers, walnuts, and pomegranate molasses, and yes, olive oil.
I could have loved this book, but Angus seemed to fall down a bit on the sections describing the beautiful world of the Mediterranean. The writing is especially flat in those sections, and it was for those sections that I read the book. They are long enough, no problem there, but they are flat and can get boring pretty fast. She could have given us a much more lively picture of the sun-drenched Mediterranean world. I wanted to be immersed in the sights and sounds and smells of the Mediterranean, and the writing was just…flat. Not immersive at all, and this was, primarily, a travel book. In the end I thought this book was okay, but I also felt it could have been much better.
2.5/5
Recommended: No, not unless you’re someone who really needs to know everything about olives.
Edit: In very light print near the top, it says I read this book two times. No, I read it only once. For some reason, when I edit, it marks it down as read, instead. I don't think it goes past two, though, which, to me, is very strange. I almost always end up editing a review multiple times. This is the third edit on this review.
May 11, 2014
It is a pleasure to travel vicariously with Julie Angus. Who wouldn't want to sail the Mediterranean in the path of the Phoenicians, basking in the sun, sampling olives and olive oil along the way? This is much more than a travelogue though - the author is a molecular biologist and has the lofty goal of collecting DNA samples from olive trees to prove that the domesticated olive originated in the middle east. She also explores the history and lore of this fruit we take for granted, that rought great wealth to nations and was the source of the original oil boom. She even provides recipes and tips for tasting olive oil. Olive Odyssey is both fun and fascinating.
July 15, 2017
Getting an education about the history of olive oil production has never been so intimate. Olive Odessey is a lovely, emotional memoir-styled tour guide of the Mediterranean's most ancient olive plantations and the incredible history surrounding them. Thoroughly enjoyable.
November 29, 2018
I had no idea about how rich the olive’s history was, i loved learning about the scientific, historical, and medicinal aspects of this fruit. It makes me want to read more books of this genre for different types of foods!
January 19, 2019
What a wonderful, thoroughly enjoyable read. The author blends science and first-person travel flawlessly. This book is in the same league as books by Thor Hanson, Michael Pollan, and Dan Barber; if you like their work and style, you'll love this book.
May 16, 2024
Excellent book, but lack of a map is criminal.
March 5, 2017
A good combination of travel writing and culinary history.
September 10, 2014
Everything you didn't think you could even ask about olives, the primal fruit--the basis for modern civilisation, you might say.
From the growing, the gathering, the pressing, the tasting, the blending, and the prime regions of the olive "orchards", this book covers all but the chemical formula of all the health-giving properties
of olives and olive oil. There is even a village where most of the people are over 90 years old, and a tree possibly 6,000 years old.
From the growing, the gathering, the pressing, the tasting, the blending, and the prime regions of the olive "orchards", this book covers all but the chemical formula of all the health-giving properties
of olives and olive oil. There is even a village where most of the people are over 90 years old, and a tree possibly 6,000 years old.
August 5, 2016
I don't want to be finished! I really enjoyed this book. Yes, some of it did get a little more scientifically in depth than I liked, but I just skimmed those parts and got back to reading about their travels, food, and information about olives that interested me.
November 3, 2014
Great story .... entertaining ... and you learn a lot about olive oil
January 21, 2015
Sure learned a lot about olives and olive oil from a local author whom we'd seen launch her last book Rowboat across the Atlantic.
Read
October 1, 2014History of olives is interesting. Nice color illustrations. Would have liked maps and index.
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews