Origin of tapenade

The tapenade is one of the most famous products of the gastronomy in Provence, generally tasted on bread toasts.

It is also delicious to stuff your poultries, fish or small vegetables.
We can find very early in the antiquity some possible precursors of the tapenade. They are olive purées.
Two centuries before Jesus-Christ, Caton described in a work the receipt of the epityrum, based on stoned green or black olives, seasoned with oil, vinegar, coriander, cumin, fennel, “rue” (plant which grows in dry places) and mint.

But the epityrum is not completely a tapenade because capers are missing.
The name tapenade comes from tapeno, word of Provence for "capers", essential ingredient. The caper plant is a well known decorative shrub. There are more than 150 species in the world but only one species lives in our Mediterranean areas; it would have been imported by the first Greek colonies.
For a long time the caper plant was cultivated in the south of France (Var, Alpes Maritimes, lBouches du Rhône). In the 1710’s for example, the caper plant was very widespread and candied capers in vinegar were sent as far as Holland, England... the capers, used as condiment are the flower buttons of the caper plant’s , cutted before their opening, when they are as big as peas.