A different kind of chicken soup for the soul.
Greece has given us an impressive cast of mythical hybrid creatures. There's the Minotaur, with its body of a man and head of a bull; Pegasus, the great winged horse; centaurs, those impressive human torsos that trotted around on horses' legs; and, of course, the Avogolemono—that strange little creature whose name translates in English to the"Egg-Lemon."
Of course, I'm just kidding. Avgolemono wasn't a mythological beast at all. It's a very real mixture of eggs and lemon juice, used by real cooks in real kitchens throughout Greece to thicken and flavor broths and sauces. It also isn't just a Greek thing—these kinds of lemon-and-egg mixtures are common throughout the Mediterranean under a variety of names, possibly spread around the region by Sephardic Jews after they had been expelled from Spain in 1492 .
The funny thing, though, is that avgolemono really doesn't need to be a hybrid at all; at least, not in terms of how it's used in a recipe. One could just as easily add the lemon juice and eggs separately. In fact, I think there's a strong case to be made that that's often the best way to do it. After talking to a few different native Greek friends, what became clear was that those varying ingredient ratios weren't a sign of an abundance of bad recipes, though some of them may have been bad, but instead a reflection of just how subjective the"right" amount of lemon and egg should be in any given recipe. Talk to even a few Greeks and you realize that how thick and lemony a dish should be is not at all a settled question.
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