Neolithic man knew of fava and cultivated it in the Eastern Mediterranean Basin circa 6,500 BC. By the Bronze age, the easy growing protein rich and cold resistant plant had made its way across Europe and northern Africa. By the Medieval Age, fava, protein rich (32% RDA for iron, 42% RDA for folate, a good source of thiamine, vitamin K, B-6, potassium, selenium, zinc and magnesium), was the dietary staple of the masses across what is today, Europe.

Those tissue thin pastry sheets layered, stacked, wrapped and coiled into an endless variety of toothsome savory and sweet snacks, breakfast-to-goes, sides and entrees, Filo, Fillo, Phyllo is translated from the Greek, “leaf” and neatly describes this transparent pastry.

The earliest recipes and reference to stacking thin layers of dough was with nuts and honey, by the ancient Greeks as the sweetmeat called “gastrin”. Gastrin, a Cretan dessert described by Athenaeus in 500BC called for three thin layers of dough stacked with nuts, sesame and poppy seeds, and doused with honey.