The ancient Greek meal is not thought of in terms of starter-main-dessert but in two blocks: sitos, the grain base (barley cake maza, wheat bread), and opson, everything eaten "with" it — fish, meat, herbs, cheese, olives. Eating too much opson relative to bread made you an opsophagos, a glutton. After the deipnon (evening meal) came the symposion, the time for wine mixed with water, songs, and stories — this is where heroes and monsters like the Chimera were recounted.

Lycia, land of the Chimera, has been renowned since antiquity for its amber, powerful thyme honey, harvested on the scorched slopes where, they say, the monster's breath made flames spring from the ground (Yanartaş, still burning today). This honey binds the recipes: it glazes the meat, sweetens the wine, and seals the sesame.