Food in Rome

[markus]

This is something that came about after a conversation with malins, and could have fitted in the Roman Resources thread. However, there's such a lot of different topics going in in there, I thought I'd start a separate thread to keep things in one place.

When we think of Rome, we certainly think of crucifixion, scourging, slaves of all kinds, and copious indulgence in food and wine.

So, I'd like this to be a resource for notes, descriptions and what have you for Roman stories that feature banquets.

My first offering is an actual Roman recipe for milk fed snails.

6 snails per person
2 pints of milk
Salt
1tsp Garum (or anchovy essence)
1 tblsp Wine

Clean the Snails with a sponge, and remove the membrane so they can come out from their shells.
Put in a vessel with half the milk and the salt, for 1 day, then in a fresh vessel with the remaining milk for another day, cleaning away the excrement every hour.
When the snails are fat to the point that they can no longer return to their shells, fry on oil . Serve with a dressing of Garum and wine.

I often eat snails, but they should not be removed from their shell. They must stay in a cage for a week and eat only tender salad leaves. Then they must be kept for three days without eating before being cooked in a sauce with their shell. Obviously I don't eat them with Garum.

 

[markus]

Ah yes, I've read they were kept in jars of clay and stuffed there. I love imagining I am a slave and I have to feed the dormice in their jars.

Yes. They were inside clay pots called "Glirarium" (singular,). They were peeled after being immersed in boiling water and served with honey.

 

[flesh1]

This is the first time I answer in this forum. Sorry for my uncertain language level.
Romans used to cook grapes jam in lead pans for a simple reason: the jam was sweeter when cooked in presence of lead instead of copper.
The reason was very simple: part of the sugar was converted into ethanol and then acetic acid.
The acid corroded small parts of the inner surface of the pan liberating Pb++ ions, thus forming lead diacetate Pb(CH3COO)2.
This is a toxic salt, very sweet.
I tasted it, a few crystals. It's really sweet !!
This was called The sugar of Saturno (Saturno was a roman god).
But eating that jam was very dangerous because dose after dose accumulates a certain amount of toxicity.

By the way, tomorrow I'm going to bath in ancient roman spa, Acquae Passeris, a hot spring.
Just imagine, 20 centuries ago men and women used to bath and fauck like hedgehogs in those puddles.
They still survive nowadays, the same water, more or less the same puddles.
But nowadays you can't behave sexually like in ancient days.

 

[old slave]

But eating that jam was very dangerous

Fascinating.

Could it explain some of the alleged mental afflictions we know of?

 

[KageKamen]

You have a point that I can relate to. Collars, for example, weren't that common for Roman slaves. They existed but they weren't universal by any means, nor even widespread. But in my Roman fantasy, all slaves are collared.

To follow this tangent for a moment... I like the collar because it makes for a good neutral, universal symbol of slavery. Unlike whips and chains, it doesn't require either bad slaves or bad masters. And it can also be relatively subtle and is fairly cutomisable and practical.

 

[Praefectus Praetorio]

I know I keep advertising it, but I don't even apologise - when she was working on 'Amica', Velut Luna included a great deal of well-researched detail on the meals and wine, the eating customs and courtesies, and the domestic architecture of high-class houses in Pompeii and around the Bay of Naples, her story brings them to life very vividly:

http://www.cruxforums.com/xf/resources/amica-the-slavegirl-of-pompeii-by-velut-luna.402/

Pompeii's Panis Quadratus

 

[Praefectus Praetorio]

 

[Eulalia]

Pompeii's Panis Quadratus

That's a good little video, though in the end the way they made bread was much the same way as anybody else did, and probably had done for a few millennia. Interesting that he uses buckwheat (kashi) with wholemeal, I don't know why, it wasn't known to the Romans (and they wouldn't have had any use for it if they had known of it), it seems to have reached the Balkans from the far east in medieval times, and spread through parts of central Europe where it's too cold for any grain to grow.

 

[l'bogo]

That's a good little video, though in the end the way they made bread was much the same way as anybody else did, and probably had done for a few millennia. Interesting that he uses buckwheat (kashi) with wholemeal, I don't know why, it wasn't known to the Romans (and they wouldn't have had any use for it if they had known of it), it seems to have reached the Balkans from the far east in medieval times, and spread through parts of central Europe where it's too cold for any grain to grow.

I think that the use of buckwheat was only to improve the taste of bread prepared with spelled = farro (triticum monococcum), only after the conquest of Greece did we start to use wheat flour (triticum dicoccum, triticum vulgare, triticum aestivum, triticum durum).

 

[windar]

Pompeii's Panis Quadratus

Seems like using a volcano to bake your bread is probably a bad idea...

 

[Praefectus Praetorio]

Goose liver fattened with figs! Yum!

 

[poem21045]

Pompeii's Panis Quadratus

The Romans have come a long way with what they do with bread. . .

 

[Eulalia]

I think that the use of buckwheat was only to improve the taste of bread prepared with spelled = farro (triticum monococcum), only after the conquest of Greece did we start to use wheat flour (triticum dicoccum, triticum vulgare, triticum aestivum, triticum durum).

I think that guy used the buckwheat to improve the texture rather than the taste - spelt flour is very trendy these days, much less gluten than modern wheats, which is healthier but harder to bake successfully, it can turn out hard and dry - I'm not into bread-making myself, but I sometimes get bread from a very skilful baker made mainly with spelt, mixed with some wholemeal, it's tasty and has a good texture.

The Romans have come a long way with what they do with bread. . .

I think if Velut Luna were here, she'd point out that both Pompeian bread and pizza are Napolitana, non Romana!

 

[flesh1]

This is an original recipe recipe on the roman age, if you fancy archaeo-cooking:

LIVER WITH FIGS

Ingredients for 4 people:

400 g of liver;
2 onions;
6 figs;
4 tablespoons white wine vinegar;
4 tablespoons of anchovy paste
1 glass of marsala fortified wine
Flour
2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil;
butter (Optional, I prefer not)
Salt;
Pepper.

Preparation:

Slice the onion and cook with the oil and butter. Wither for 5 minutes, then add the chopped figs and cook for another 10 minutes over medium heat, adding the vinegar and fish sauce. Then add the liver cut into strips and floured, blend with the marsala and cook for another 5 minutes. The liver should not cook too much, otherwise it gets hard. Season and pepper.

I suggest a modification: instead of cooking raw liver slices, cut the slices and pour them in hot water a few seconds, half a minute, just to make them a bit hard in the surface.
Pork or beef liver, beef is a bit more delicate, pork is cheaper and a bit rough in the taste, but good all the same.
I tried it a couple of times, taste is a bit different from what we are accustomed today,.
The magazine reported it dated to the bizantine age, immediately after the fall of the western empire (476), but is surely previous.
The mixture of sweet taste with meat and vegetables was common in the past.
Figs, fresh or dried in winter time, were a very popular food in ancient times, as legumes were, like lentils, chick peas, beans, very common in all the mediterranean area.
One thing is what rich people used to eat in banquets as you can see in movies, a different thing was what common people used to feed with in the real life.

 

[flesh1]

This is a roman age building. I took this photo last week, coming back from the thermal springs in the evening at sunset.
I don't know the use of this building, there are some more near that one.
The road is the original consular road Cassia (the modern Cassia runs in another place), about a couple of miles north of Viterbo.
In the middle age that road was renamed Francigena, traveled by pilgrimes towards Rome (about 50 miles south).
Along the road, in those buildings, there were prostitutes because prostitution was allowed outside the town walls (in the middle age Viterbo was seat of the papacy so prostitutes lived inside the town but they were allowed to work only outside the walls, their clients were pilgrims).
I liked the ancient building in the sunset, very impressive, so I took the photograph.
Tomorrow afternoon I'll go back to the thermal bath.

 

[flesh1]

In the small photo I took the picture of the canal once used to feed the thermal puddle with water.
I insert the photo of the original puddle of 2000 yrs ago:

This is what remains of the original ancient puddle.
You can't notice from the photo, but hot water through the canals of the picture of the previous post entered the puddle making some falls, creating a suggestive effect.
Nowadays there is still water coming up at 60°C, but it takes another way and that puddle is dry.
Imagine a common day, for example the afternoon of the 20th july 180 a.C.., men and women bathing there with a small skirt and no bras.
Talking, joking, smiling, laughing, touching each others, and after the sunset....................
In that right place.

 

[poem21045]

This is an original recipe recipe on the roman age, if you fancy archaeo-cooking:

LIVER WITH FIGS

Ingredients for 4 people:

400 g of liver;
2 onions;
6 figs;
4 tablespoons white wine vinegar;
4 tablespoons of anchovy paste
1 glass of marsala fortified wine
Flour
2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil;
butter (Optional, I prefer not)
Salt;
Pepper.

Preparation:

Slice the onion and cook with the oil and butter. Wither for 5 minutes, then add the chopped figs and cook for another 10 minutes over medium heat, adding the vinegar and fish sauce. Then add the liver cut into strips and floured, blend with the marsala and cook for another 5 minutes. The liver should not cook too much, otherwise it gets hard. Season and pepper.

I suggest a modification: instead of cooking raw liver slices, cut the slices and pour them in hot water a few seconds, half a minute, just to make them a bit hard in the surface.
Pork or beef liver, beef is a bit more delicate, pork is cheaper and a bit rough in the taste, but good all the same.
I tried it a couple of times, taste is a bit different from what we are accustomed today,.
The magazine reported it dated to the bizantine age, immediately after the fall of the western empire (476), but is surely previous.
The mixture of sweet taste with meat and vegetables was common in the past.
Figs, fresh or dried in winter time, were a very popular food in ancient times, as legumes were, like lentils, chick peas, beans, very common in all the mediterranean area.
One thing is what rich people used to eat in banquets as you can see in movies, a different thing was what common people used to feed with in the real life.

You'd have to pay me quite a lot to ever eat beef/calf liver again. (Chicken livers, if deep fried, are at least palatable. Never tried pork liver except in scrapple, actually one of my favorite childhood foods.)

Scrapple - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[malins]

Never tried pork liver except in scrapple

A similar thing still exists today especially in the Rhineland area as Panhas. Here a recipe from an 1879 edition of the 'Practical Cookbook' by Henriette Davidis (the universal classic of 19th century German cookbooks) -- this one was especially targeted as 'Practial Cookbook for Germans in America'.
(It starts at #17 on the bottom of page 357. That page by the way starts out with '#13 Mecklenburgian Brain Sausage' ... there was hardly any part of an animal that wasn't eaten....

... now of course we've gone far from "Roman food" but at least still dealing with "older recipes that aren't entirely familiar today". The liver with figs recipe does sound quite delicious though.

 

[poem21045]

A similar thing still exists today especially in the Rhineland area as Panhas. Here a recipe from an 1879 edition of the 'Practical Cookbook' by Henriette Davidis (the universal classic of 19th century German cookbooks) -- this one was especially targeted as 'Practial Cookbook for Germans in America'.
(It starts at #17 on the bottom of page 357. That page by the way starts out with '#13 Mecklenburgian Brain Sausage' ... there was hardly any part of an animal that wasn't eaten....
View attachment 880183View attachment 880184
... now of course we've gone far from "Roman food" but at least still dealing with "older recipes that aren't entirely familiar today". The liver with figs recipe does sound quite delicious though.

The folks of German extraction known as the Pennsylvania Dutch (York & Lancaster Counties in that state) call scrapple panhaas (slight change in spelling from your reference). My mother was from that area, so I grew up on lots of their cuisine. Smorgasbords. . . ummm.

Sauerbraten was my favorite: slow cooked beef/ginger/vinegar wafting through the house a whole winter day. . . .