Fresh Fruit Skewers with Honey Yogurt Dip

Choose ripe but firm fruit that won't fall off skewers. Alternate colors for visual appeal. Full-fat Greek yogurt makes the creamiest dip. If making ahead, store skewers flat and covered to prevent fruit from drying out. Bring yogurt to room temperature for better flavor.

The pairing of yogurt and honey is ancient enough to span continents. Yogurt itself was almost certainly discovered by accident in Mesopotamia or Central Asia around 5000 BCE, when Neolithic people carrying milk in pouches made from animal stomachs found that the wild bacteria present in the lining would ferment the milk into a tangy, thickened substance that lasted longer than fresh milk. Wikipedia confirms this as the probable origin, noting that "the first milk-producing animals were domesticated" around this time. The ancient Greeks had their own version, called oxygala (ὀξύγαλα), and the physician Galen, writing in the 2nd century AD, documented that oxygala was consumed with honey — the same combination that still defines Greek yogurt at the table today. Ancient Indian texts called the pairing of yogurt and honey "the food of the gods." Pliny the Elder provided the oldest surviving written description of something resembling yogurt, remarking in the 1st century AD that certain peoples knew how to "thicken the milk into a substance with an agreeable acidity." The word yogurt is Turkish in origin and reflects the product's journey into Europe via the Ottoman Empire. In 1905, the Bulgarian medical student Stamen Grigorov, studying in Geneva, became the first person to identify the bacteria responsible for yogurt's fermentation; in 1907 the rod-shaped bacterium was named Lactobacillus delbrueckii subsp. bulgaricus. The Russian Nobel laureate Ilya Mechnikov, inspired by Grigorov's work, later hypothesised that regular yogurt consumption was responsible for the unusually long lifespans of Bulgarian peasants — an idea that helped launch yogurt's modern health reputation. Serving yogurt alongside fresh fruit on skewers at a party table is an instinctive version of a pairing that cultures from Athens to India recognised thousands of years ago.