While the story of King Francis’s dallying with yogurt turns out to be mythical, the real story of the introduction of yogurt into Europe turns out to be even more captivating. In 1917, a huge fire started accidentally by an unattended kitchen stove consumed the central part of Salonica, a city that had been ceded to Greece by the Ottoman Empire in 1912 following the First Balkan War. Salonica at the time had a majority Jewish population dating back to 1492, when the Alhambra Decree issued by Spanish monarchs Ferdinand II and Isabella I forced Jews to either convert to Christianity or leave Spain. Most chose to leave and found refuge in Salonica ,where they became merchants, ran shipping houses, textile factories, grain and flour mills and tobacco-processing plants.
