Black soup was a regional cuisine of ancient Sparta, made with boiled pork meat and blood, using only salt and vinegar to flavour. The soup was well known during antiquity in the Greek world, but no original recipe of the dish survives today. The earliest recorded mention of the soup can be dated to the fifth century BC, in a comedy titled The Miners, written by Pherecrates. The ancient sources provide contradictory accounts on whether the soup was a luxurious meal served only at banquets or a dish that could be afforded by all Spartiates. Throughout history, black soup has been praised by and associated with figures such as Benjamin Rush and Adolf Hitler. Etymology The ancient Greek author, Plutarch, who wrote in the first and second century AD, mentioned a Spartan dish in his Life of Lycurgus, named . Today, the phrase has been translated to "black soup" or "black broth." In other ancient sources, this same dish was also known as , which means "blood soup," and , , which can be translated as "dip sauce." Other times, this dish was simply referred to as . In ancient Greek, the term means black, while could refer to any soup cooked using animal products. The 1st-century AD medical writer Dioscurides recorded that there were many variations of . For example, it could be cooked using frog, crayfish, rooster, beef, deer fat, and fish. The 5th–4th-century BC philosopher Plato also used the term when referring to a meat dish. Aristotle, writing around the 4th century BC, stated in his that could be made using horse, pork, mutton, or goat. Contrarily, the ancient Greeks had another designated name for soups made primarily with vegetables, which was . Ancient sources The majority of the ancient sources that describe black soup were written by non-Spartan authors. These authors include Pherecrates of the fifth century BC, Alexis and Matro of Pitane of the fourth and third century BC, Nicostratus of the fourth century BC, and Euphron of the third century BC. For example, in Pherecrates' comedy, The Miners, a woman returning from the underworld states that she saw black broth free-flowing through the streets. Antiphanes, a contemporary comedian of Alexis, had also noted that black soup was a staple of the Spartan culture in a play titled The Archon. A fragmentary anecdote indicates that Nicostratus once ridiculed a cook for not knowing how to