(Cue soundtrack by Respighi)
My adventures in the SCA included cooking many feasts, and collecting cookbooks from the medieval period and before. Recreating ancient dishes is more challenging than using modern recipes, since many authors did not give amounts of each ingredient (or you have to look up the units they did use) and some leave out much of the instructions. (or include very detailed instructions on slaughtering and dressing an animal that you’d really rather not have) You have a lot of leeway for creativity.
A first century Roman cookbook, attributed to someone named Apicius, is titled De Re Coquinaria [On Cooking]. It contains a wide variety of dishes, from the simplest salads (“the carrots salted with pure oil and vinegar”) to the most complex molded salads with dozens of ingredients, hot pasta dishes, meats with sauces and stuffings, sausages and meatballs, and some that seem to be intended for medicinal purposes.
I purchased the English translation by Vehling. He references several previous translations and manuscripts; most of the oldest copies are more or less damaged and alternate readings of some passages abound. Then, too, Vehling himself clearly made a few translation errors, including his insistence on translating "cucurbitae" as "pumpkin" when pumpkins are definitely known to be New World in origin, and the recipes in question make a lot more sense for the gourd or summer squash type of vegetable. “To make the harder ones palatable” makes no sense at all about pumpkins, but is needed advice when you find that crookneck that hid under the leaves until it was the size and shape of a dachshund. So where he says pumpkin, I write squash.
This one sounds tasty:
# 176 Gustum de Cucurbitis Farsilibus
A dish of stuffed squash is made thus: peel and cut the squash lengthwise into oblong pieces which hollow out and put in a cool place. The dressing for the same make in this way: crush pepper, lovage and origany, moistened with broth; mince cooked brains [oh dear. Let’s use a soft cheese or some bulk sausage meat instead.] and beat raw eggs and mix all together to form a paste; add broth as taste requires. Stuff the above prepared pieces of squash that have not been fully cooked [when were they even partly cooked? is “a cool place” supposed to mean a very low oven??] with the dressing; fit two pieces together and close them tight. [at this point I think you poach or bake them so the stuffing hardens]
Take the cooked ones out and fry them. [perhaps slice thickly and fry the slabs] A wine sauce make thus: crush pepper, lovage moistened with wine, raisin wine to taste, a little oil, place in pan to be cooked; when done bind with roux. Cover the fried squash with this sauce, sprinkle with pepper and serve.
The book contains a lot of recipes for sauce or seasoning. I suppose any fool could roast a hunk of meat or a bird, but the master cook was distinguished by the flavors he used.
“Sauce for Crane or Duck”
This is number 215. Like many of Apicius' recipes, it is a mere list of ingredients; proportions and technique are for the redactor to discover.
"Pepper, lovage, cumin, dry coriander, mint, origany, pine nuts, dates, broth, oil, honey, mustard, and wine."
What I did:
Put the duck to roast, covered, with a little water in the pan, at 325 degrees for 2 1/2 hours.
1/2 tsp. pepper
1 1/2 Tbsp fresh minced lovage leaf
1 tsp dry mustard
1 tsp cumin
1 tsp coriander
2 Tbsp fresh minced mint
3 Tbsp fresh oregano
2 Tbsp pine nuts
8 dates or figs
1/4 c red wine
1 Tbsp olive oil
1/2 c chicken broth (from bouillon)
1/2 c renderings from the roasting pan
2 Tbsp. honey
1 tsp salt or to taste
I put the spices and fresh herbs through a food processor (much faster than the historic mortar and pestle!) with the pine nuts and dry fruit. What I had on hand turned out to be figs, not dates, so the resulting sauce was slightly different than intended, but whatever. I added the wine to moisten it so it would process better. I then sauteed this paste in the oil so the flavors mellowed, and dissolved it in the broth and honey before returning it to the blender for a final smooth finish.
Now, in true medieval fashion, cut bite-sized strips of hot duck meat, dip the end in the sauce, and enjoy! (Like Chaucer's Prioress, never wet your fingers in the sauce too deep.)
Still, a good roast may have its own special flavors:
Roast Pork with Honey
Porcellum Assum Tractomelinum
Empty the pig by the neck, clean and dry, crush one ounce pepper, honey and wine, place in a pan, heat; next break dry toast and mix with the things in the sauce pan; stir with a whip of fresh laurel twigs so that the paste is nice and smooth until sufficiently cooked. This dressing fill into the pig, wrap in parchment, place in the oven, garnish nicely and serve.
Since we don’t generally slaughter suckling pigs, I do this with a pork loin roast.
Mix 1 tsp. ground pepper, ¼ cup honey, ½ cup red wine, and about 1 cup bread crumbs. If you can’t follow the instructions about the laurel twigs (that is, you don’t have your own bay leaf bush), soak a bay leaf in the wine for 15 minutes before mixing. Whisk very smooth while heating. Cut a large slit in the loin and stuff it, pinning it closed afterward. Cover with foil or parchment paper and roast at 300 degrees for at least an hour and a half, or until a meat thermometer reads 165. Remove the cover and glaze with thinned honey in the last 15 minutes of cooking.
Having the original text or something close gives you a chance to figure stuff out for yourself. Some other available versions of the book give the author’s redactions of the recipes, not the actual text, and some of these are wildly wrong. Here’s one I have seen in both Vehling’s translation and in a redacted cookbook.
BETACEOS VARRONIS
Varro beets, that is, black ones of which the roots must be cleaned well, cook them with mead and a little salt and oil; boil them down in this liquor so that the roots are saturated thereby; the liquid itself is good drinking. It is also nice to cook a chicken in with them.
OK, a few points. Many food historians will try to tell you that beets as grown today did not exist in period, that whenever a recipe says beets they are talking about “silver beets” or what we call chard, in other words, beet greens only. One 16th century English translation of an Italian cookbook even renders “betas” as
“betony”, an herb. That book usually lists “betas” along with parsley and marjoram, as if it were an herb, so that seems possibly justified. But elsewhere it appears as a leafy green. Some of the recipes in Apicius use “beets” when they seem to mean the greens as well. One calls for “small white beets” alongside celery and “bulbs”, suggesting that there were root beets available but they were white. Unless it means very young chard leaves.
This recipe would seem to be documentary proof that red beets did exist as an alternate variety in Imperial Rome. The roots may not have been as big and fleshy as today’s varieties, but they are dark red (“black”), need to be well washed, and are clearly included in the dish, which would never work with chard. (possibly greens and roots cooked together, as some people do turnips). Varro, incidentally, was a writer on agriculture. Maybe he had a hand in breeding or introducing this new variety?
I believe what is rendered as “mead” was “honey wine” and might better be read as “honey, wine” but suit yourself and what you have available. This is a very tasty way to cook beets, with or without their greens.
So how did a later redactor come up with kale soup out of this?? Kale is a cabbage, utterly unrelated to beets. If looking for a substitute for beet greens or chard, the one to pick is spinach. The recipe is obviously for vegetables, not a soup, and recommends drinking the broth as a separate dish. Cooking kale in chicken broth with wine, honey, salt and oil, is also very tasty, but it has nothing to do with the original recipe. I call it Kale Soup by Erroneous.
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Here are a couple of split pea recipes I like very well.
Vitellian Pea Soup
“Cook the peas, smooth them: crush pepper, lovage, ginger, and on the condiments put hard boiled
yolks, 3 ounces of honey, also broth, wine, and vinegar, place in a sauce pan the finely chopped
condiments with oil add, put on the stove to be cooked: with this flavor the peas which must be smooth; and if they be too harsh add honey and serve.”
My way:
Cook 1 cup split peas in 3 cups meat broth (or salted water for vegetarians)
When they are completely falling apart as you stir, add ½ tsp pepper, 1 TBSP crushed dried lovage leaf, ¼ tsp ginger, 1 hard boiled egg yolk, 1 TBSP honey, 1 oz red wine and 1 TBSP balsamic vinegar, 1 tsp olive oil. Simmer briefly, adjust seasoning to taste.
Apicius also recommends this recipe for fava beans.
Roman Pea Salad
“Cook the peas, work well, place in the cold, stirring until they have cooled off. Finely chop onions and the whites of hard boiled eggs, season with salt and a little vinegar, the yolks press through a colander into an entree dish. Season with fresh oil and serve.”
My way:
Cook 1 cup split peas until very soft, drain and mash (or just keep cooking until they are really thick.
Place in a clear serving dish and chill. Finely mince the whites of two eggs and half a medium onion,
soaking the onion bits in white wine vinegar to make them milder. Mix whites, onions, salt, and spread on top of the cooked peas. Press the yolks through a strainer over the top as a garnish. The oil seems scarcely necessary, but if it were infused with garlic or other herbs a drizzle might be nice.
This is also awesome and even more attractive with fresh or frozen peas, not mashed, just briefly cooked.
For the best appearance these must be free-range farm eggs, not the pallid things laid by hens that never see the sun.
Vehling remarks, rather foolishly IMHO, "the texts fail to state that the whites, yolks, onions, vinegar and oil must eventually be combined into a dressing very similar to our own modern vinaigrette..."
If the text doesn't say that, it quite possibly doesn't mean it, Mr. Vehling. My redaction follows the text exactly.
Many recipes in this text are mere ingredient lists. All else is up to the cook. Here is one so terse that Vehling himself says “ This formula, lacking detailed instructions, is of course perfectly obscure, and it would be useless to debate over it.” But I have found one or two possibilities. See what you can make of it.
HYPOTRIMA (an earlier translator says this means a mess of potage.)
pepper, lovage, dry mint, pignolia nuts, raisins, date wine, sweet cheese, honey, vinegar, broth, wine, oil, must or reduced must.
...and that’s it.
Well, let’s see. Must is the stuff from pressed grapes when the juice is poured off to ferment. Adding it back and infusing it is what makes balsamic vinegar. So let’s combine the “must” and “vinegar” into balsamic vinegar in our modern ingredient list.
“Broth” is how Vehling translates “liquamen”, a highly disputed word. Some insist that it means garum (fish sauce) but since garum is its own word, originally a condiment prepared from a specific fish called garus, that is not necessarily so. Garum slowly became generalized to mean any sauce, and there are recipes in Apicius for “oenogarum” (wine sauce), “oxygarum” (sour sauce) and even “hydrogarum” , a seasoned water for poaching meatballs in. It seems even less likely that liquamen means fish sauce when you see the enormous range of dishes in which liquamen occurs. In some, it is definitely broth, as in soup. Some sort of concentrated stock or flavoring may be indicated. In the recipes for molded dishes, “the very best broth” seems to mean a well reduced, gelatiny broth to bind the parts. In one recipe, you are supposed to fry fish cakes in liquamen, which wouldn't work unless it meant liquefied fat, maybe drippings from a roast. Drippings would work well in a lot of places that call for “broth”
Or it may just be liquid salt in some cases. Salt in those days was mined in great slabs, hauled around on camel back, and contained quite a lot of dirt. To make it usable, one would have to dissolve it and let all the grit settle, then strain it and perhaps evaporate it down. Only a few recipes like the beets above call for “salt”. But practically all of them call for liquamen. No recipe calls for both, IIRC. Not exactly QED. But a workable possibility. However, there is also a word for “brine”.
For purposes of pureeing this ingredient list, I’m going with actual chicken broth.
“Sweet cheese” I assume means fresh, like ricotta or mozzarella, not aged.
If indeed the title means “potage” then this must be a seasoning or dressing for cooked legumes, grains, or greens or something like that. Or maybe it is itself a soup?
So let’s see how far we get.
We could cook all these ingredients in with some lentils or chickpeas. Except the cheese, I think, that ought to go in last.
We could puree them cold. Do we want to puree the whole lot, or reserve some ingredients as toppings? For one experiment, let’s save the pine nuts and raisins for the top, and puree the rest to stir into the cooked lentils. For a second experiment, we’ll try cooking greens with all the herbs and liquid seasonings, sprinkle cheese, nuts and raisins on top. For a third, we could puree the whole lot and use it as a thick dressing. Even try it on a salad. We could greatly increase the proportion of broth and make it a sort of cheese soup.
Are we doing what Apicius did? Who knows? And who cares, really? That’s the fun of ancient recipes. Lots of possibilities!
Apicius is not our only source for culinary history from Rome:
Here is the link to a fragment of poem by Virgil, with some commentary, which talks of an old farmer making moretum, a garlicky cheese paste that is the ancestor of pistou and pesto, for his breakfast:
http://www.cooksinfo.com/moretum
notice that standard translations use some words that are clearly wrong, like calling this a "salad". Moretum with bread was a mainstay of the working class diet at this time.
As you can see the herbal ingredients differ from pistou: celery leaves, rue, and coriander seed in addition to garlic. Lots of garlic, four full bulbs. We don't actually know how much cheese this was to flavor, but his mortar must have been a big one. Salt, olive oil, and vinegar were also added.
The cheese seems to have been a hard, brined cheese, hung up with a cord through its middle in his scanty pantry above the hearth. (in the whole poem, to which my link does not work) Since he was Roman, Romano cheese would seem most appropriate, although Parmesan will work well and cost less. Feta although brined is not hard, so would produce a different result, maybe just as good. A hard smoked cheese would be very authentic.
For some reason many redacters use cilantro leaves, but the poem clearly specifies the seed, coriander, “trembling on their slender stems”.
Rue is a problematic ingredient, very rarely used these days because of its bitter flavor and irritant sap, which can be very photo-sensitizing. However, some people like it and herbalists sometimes prescribe it. Although it was considered medicinal for many purposes in Rome, and is acknowledged to be anti-spasmodic even today, it is also a potential abortifacient and should not be consumed by pregnant women. I would substitute another herb, or use the dried powder which is not irritating. So for this experiment, I will use another very popular Roman herb, lovage. From the old farmer's garden list I could also have chosen sorrel or elecampane, if I had either growing.
In a food processor, puree:
one full bulb of garlic, peeled and separated (mine are smallish, probably his were too)
1 tsp. ground coriander seed (if you put it in whole most of it stays whole)
1/4 cup celery leaves
1/4 cup lovage leaves
1/2 cup grated Romano cheese
1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese
dash of salt (adjust to taste)
after processing well, while still running, add 1 TBSP balsamic vinegar and drizzle in olive oil until a paste forms.
The old farmer ate this with a very plain unleavened bread, really just flour and water, like maybe a flour tortilla today. I would suggest pita or a baguette instead.
If he had cracked his baked, dried flatbread into boiling water as other Roman recipes do call for, that would be whole wheat pasta you could stir this paste into, for the equivalent of spaghetti with pesto.
And that's how recipes evolve.
This stuff is a garlic lover's dream, just don't eat it before a first date!
Other ingredient notes: the Roman empire had access to all sorts of peppercorns; black and green, long pepper, cubebs, grains of paradise, whatever. If a recipe calls for “pepper” and you think black pepper would be nasty in it, try cubebs. They are more like a sweet spice. Long pepper is somewhat brighter and less pungent than black pepper, quite nice in many recipes. Also a bugger to find, but catching on a little bit in online sources.
If you haven't tasted lovage you don’t know what you’re missing. It is a deep-rooted perennial herb that looks like celery on steroids, and has a warm, savory flavor delicious in soups and stews. The root is used to balance female hormones.
Laser, or silphium, occurs in many dishes. The Romans loved it so much they harvested it to extinction. (With help from nomadic goat herders, perhaps. ) The closest relative available today is asafoetida, called hing in Indian cuisine.
Romans ate a lot of brains. While this is nutritionally very sound, today’s awareness of prion diseases probably rules out following those recipes faithfully. You might manage something with scrambled eggs in place of brains.
Almost any animal, any bird, any fish, or any shellfish will make its appearance somewhere in a Roman recipe book. They seem to have had very catholic tastes, or just an unwillingness to waste anything.