The story of Hummus
Hummus is simply the Arabic word for chickpeas, and the full name of the dish is hummus bi tahini, chickpeas with tahini. Chickpeas were among the first legumes farmed in the Fertile Crescent, but the purée itself is younger: a 13th century cookbook from Baghdad has a recipe for mashed chickpeas with tahini, soured with vinegar rather than lemon and with no garlic. Lemon and garlic, which now seem essential, came later.
Across the Levant hummus is everyday food, and in Israel it became something close to a national dish within a few years of the state's founding. Jews from Arab countries knew it from home, and the hummus places in Arab towns and villages became somewhere everyone drove to. Between 2008 and 2010 Lebanon and Israel competed for the world record for the largest plate of hummus, in the village of Abu Ghosh near Jerusalem and in a village near Beirut, and the last record, the Lebanese one, passed ten tonnes.
What makes Hummus itself
Good hummus starts with chickpeas cooked far longer than seems reasonable, until one crushes between your fingers with no hard core at all. Tahini is not an extra but half of the flavour: Israeli hummusiya style uses roughly one part tahini to three parts cooked chickpeas, which is why it is so creamy and pale. Temperature matters just as much. The chickpeas are blended hot, and the hummus is served warm or at room temperature, never straight from the fridge.
