prepare the Spartan black soup, along with other dishes such as (: stuffed leaves), (: a Lydian dish), and (: a type of dessert). Other references to black soup are indirect. For example, in Aristophane's Knights, one of the lines in this comedy is "He has had tasty stews exported from Athens for the Spartan fleet." Although the reference is not explicit, the fifth century BC poet was suggesting that the Spartan version of stew was not as good as the stew cooked by the Athenians. Classics scholar David Harvey stated that the playwright was likely making fun of Spartan black broth in this passage. Suda Lexicon, a Byzantine Greek historical encyclopedia compiled much later during the tenth century AD, states that was a stock cooked using pig, cow, goat, sheep, or bear meat. Julius Pollux's lexicographic work, , notes that the black broth was a Spartan dish cooked with meat and blood. Origin According to what Euphron (a third-century BC comedy poet) had written in one of his fragmentary comedies, titled The Brothers, a cook mentions that a man named Lamprias was responsible for inventing the Spartan black soup. However, this claim would be impossible to verify today. Ingredients No recording of black soup's exact recipe exists today. Ancient literary sources, including historical, medical, and lexicographic, contain descriptions of black soup and its ingredients. Through interpreting these sources, it can be concluded that the Spartans cooked this dish using pig's blood and meat, with salt and vinegar as the only condiments. According to Plutarch's descriptions, the solid meat chunks in the soup were to be taken out and served separately to the younger attendees during banquets. Plutarch is one of the ancient authors that alluded to this dish in his writings, such as in the Life of Lycurgus. In a passage explaining the Spartan society's dining and banqueting culture, Plutarch states that Sparta's most famous dish was black soup. The text also suggests that the elders would save the meat for the younger attendees, and they themselves would drink only the liquid. From Plutarch's account, can be interpreted as a soup dish made primarily using meat. In another work of Plutarch, , the author states that the Lacedaemonian (Spartan) cooks could only use vinegar and salt to prepare their food and were supposed to utilize all parts of a sacrificed animal. The historian Maciej Kokoszko theorized that Spartans did