Apicvs – Gourmet? Or not?

To eat and drink without a friend is to devour like the lion and the wolf.

 Epicurus, 341-270 BC, Ancient Greek philosopher

My copy of ‘Apicvs – The Roman Cookery Book’ (Apicius to you and me), reappeared whilst I was looking for something else. Naturally.

Olive: Oh my, he is haunting us again.

Flicking through this 1955 translation by Barbara Flower and Elisabeth Rosenbaum, I noticed the majority of recipes mentioned an ingredient called liquamen, also called garum.  The method involves putting sprats or anchovies or mackerel in a baking trough with two pints of salt to the peck of fish and mix well. Leave overnight then put into an earthenware vessel and leave in the sun for 2-3 months. Wine was sometimes added – two pints to a pint of fish.

Olive: Geesh, a recipe for food poisoning.

In most English recipes prior to 1800 (and even later) a peck of wheat flour is an understood weight of 14 pounds. However, in some recipes a peck of flour means a volume measurement of 2 gallons, which would weigh only 8 to 10 pounds. Your guess is as good as mine – but it seems an awful lot of fish would be required!

Olive: Which is why I like today’s measuring system. You know the Imperial method not that metric stuff.

Tilly: Um, the metric system decimal system of weights and measures, based on the metre for length and the kilogram for mass, was adopted in France in 1795 and is now used officially in almost all countries. Not sure it was around in Apicius’s time.

The best garum was made with the entrails of tunny fish gills, juice, blood and salt. Left for two months at most, the vessel was then pierced and the garum, called haimation flowed out.

Sounds revolting …

Olive: That is because it is revolting.

The text mentions that this was used in place of salt … and whilst salt may be used in place of this, for authentic flavour, liquamen was essential. If you are moved to make your own garum, take a look at this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5S7Bb0Qg-oE

Think I’ll stick with salt, but I suppose Chinese fish sauce might be a reasonable substitute.

A section titled ‘The Gourmet’ describes delicacies such as wombs from sterile sows, accompanied by sauce of pepper, celery seed, dried mint, asafoetida, honey, vinegar and liquamen. If grilled, the womb was rolled in bran, soaked in brine, then cooked.  Appetising, eh?

Olive: Nothing went to waste, nothing. Although I wish they had wasted some things.

Tilly: There is a terrific restaurant in London that serves everything from nose to tail – fantastic food.

Other tempting dishes included sow’s udder, roasted and served with a herb and wine sauce. With liquamen, of course. Stuffed udder contained pepper, caraway and salted sea urchin, served with mustard. My mouth is watering …

Olive: Like I said above I wish they had wasted some things.

Meats roasted in the oven were sprinkled with salt and served with honey. What? No liquimen? Honey was recommended for most meats to bring out the flavour. A sauce for roast meat comprised six scruples (don’t you love that? Equals 20 grains, or one-third dram, and equivalent to 1.296 grams.) each of parsley, hazelwort, ginger, asafoetida root, origan (yes, it is spelt that way) and cyperus and celery seed;  five laurel berries, a little costmary, three scruples of pyrethrum, twelve scruples of pepper, and sufficient liquamen and oil. I shall count out 20 grains of salt and announce that I am scrupulous in my cooking.

Olive: Now that is what I would love to see, you counting grains of salt.

Tilly: Hah! I use rock salt, so the ground grains are larger than commercially packed salt.

Various sauces included such ingredients as Welsh onion (spring onions), damsons, fennel, pine kernels, almonds, dates, hard-boiled eggs, celery – all with several herbs and spices, all sounding tasty.

Pig’s stomach didn’t do it for me … even though the stuffing made with minced pork and brains, with eggs, pine nuts, spices and liquamen sounded rather good.

Nor did boiled lard, even when cooked with plenty of dill, a little oil (why?) and salt.

The grilled or roasted kidneys did appeal – cut them open, snip out the white sinew and stuff with pepper, pine nuts, chopped coriander (see Olive? The Romans knew a thing or two), and fennel seed. Close, wrap in a sausage skin – I’d opt for bacon – brown in oil and liquamen and roast.

Olive: Kidneys, are you nuts?

Tilly: No. I like most offal and stuffed kidneys sound good.

Liver marinated in honey-water mixed with eggs and milk, oenogarum, (ancient ‘ketchup’ made from wine and garum) was then cooked in oenogarum and served with sprinkled pepper. Happy to try that.

A shoulder of pork was boiled with 2lbs of barley (jeepers) and 25 dried figs. Cooked, the bone was removed and the meat browned on a hot brazier (a Roman barbecue!) and sprinkled with honey, or roasted in an oven with honey. A sauce made from passum (a raisin wine apparently developed in ancient Carthage and transmitted from there to Italy, where it was popular in the Roman Empire), pepper, rue and wine. Half was poured over the meat and the rest over sweet wine cakes. Gets better by the moment. Rue keeps flies away …

Olive: Remember, Tilly and those reading this ancient Romans feed a lot of people at their dinner time.

The wine cakes comprised 1 peck of what flour (a peck = 8-10lbs! That’s a lot of cake …) moistened with must (fresh unfermented grape juice), aniseed, cumin, 2lb fat, 1lb cheese, a little grated bark from a laurel twig. Mix together, each cake was shaped and placed on a bay leaf and baked.

Olive: Tilly, tell me how they stirred all that… and don’t tell me with their feet, as some was in the day.

Tilly: I suspect that blokes with strong arms stirred the pots with enormous wooden paddles.

The wine cakes also served as a dessert – steeped in milk (what happened to more wine?), then cooked again in the oven, and served hot with honey drizzled over and sprinkled with pepper.

Several other desserts resemble present-day offerings: a baklava-type pastry, baked egg custard, French toast minus the egg, dates stuffed with nuts and cooked in honey.

Given garlic is among the oldest known horticultural crops, I am surprised it doesn’t feature in the savoury dishes in Apicius’s book. In the Old World, Egyptian and Indian cultures referred to garlic 5000 years ago, and there is clear historical evidence for its use by the Babylonians 4500 years ago and by the Chinese 2000 years ago, so what happened to the Italians? But the wide range of herbs and spices must have made for some tasty nosh overall. This video of ancient Roman street food is interesting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qtmOdxEVytA

All in all, the offal and roast pork get my vote. And some of the street food. Just grateful I don’t need to make liquamen for flavour.

Olive: Tilly, so not surprised you brought up that garlic stuff again.

Tilly: You missed the bit about coriander …

Olive: Readers can download “Cookery and Dining in Imperial Rome by Apicius” at the link below.

https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/29728

Tilly: Might be more interested in this:

“While Apicius is full of ancient delicacies such as roasted peacock, boiled sow vulva, testicles, and other foods we would not commonly eat today, there are many others that are still popular, including tapenade, absinthe, flatbreads, and meatballs. There is even a recipe for Roman milk and egg bread that is identical to what we call French toast. And, contrary to popular belief, foie gras was not originally a French delicacy. The dish dates back twenty-five hundred years, and Pliny credits Apicius with developing a version using pigs instead of geese by feeding hogs dried figs and giving them an overdose of mulsum (honey wine) before slaughtering them.”

― Crystal King, Feast of Sorrow

Tilly and Olive