Time and Place: Roman Empire, Between 27 BC and the 4th Century AD

While the Ancient Romans were not generally as overindulgent as depicted in popular media, they did enjoy good food. Unlike the Mesopotamians and Egyptians, the Romans recorded many recipes, particularly in the 4th Century Recipes of Apicius. A wide variety of dishes are described, including meat, fish, vegetables, sauces, and desserts. Some of the foods featured were primarily for elite consumption, but far more would have been accessible to the comfortably well off but not wealthy.

The dietary staples were the “Mediterranean Trio” of grain (used in bread or porridge), olive oil, and wine, along with a wide variety of legumes, vegetables, fruit, cheese, and eggs. Meat and fish were also available, but were less common for daily use. Spices such as pepper, cumin, and coriander were popular among those who could afford them, alongside a wide variety of herbs used by almost everyone. Also popular was a salty fermented fish sauce called garum, although I omitted this rather than use a modern approximation. Except along the northern frontier or possibly places like Egypt with a long tradition of it, the Romans generally did not drink beer or consume butter, which they considered barbaric. They preferred wine and olive oil if they could obtain it.

Formal Roman dinners usually had three courses. The first was a variety of appetizers including salads, vegetables, egg dishes, and for those who could afford them, shellfish dishes. The multitude of egg recipes also suggest that they were very popular. The second course contained various meat and fish main dishes, with pork, seafood, and fowl being especially common. Finally, the dessert course predominantly consisted of fruit and nuts, but could also feature custard, cheesecake, or stuffed dates.

With all this in mind, I set out to create a menu. In place of wine I used grape juice, and for bread I baked a refrigerated pizza dough with a bit of oil and salt sprinkled on top. For the first course, I decided to make Columella salad based on a few different translations I found and a sort of oven omelet with leeks and mushrooms. With the salad, the main issue was that the original recipe did not have specific quantities and the modern interpretations used metric weights instead of cups, tablespoons, etc. for measuring. Using a calculation of 1kg = 2lbs more or less and bearing in mind that quantities were not exact, I settled on 1 leek, 1/2 bunch parsley, 4oz of feta cheese (half an 8oz chunk), several shakes of dried mint, a few of thyme and coriander, a bit of pepper, and enough vinegar and oil to coat ingredients without having them pool at the bottom of the bowl. For the omelet (Roman patina) I baked some beaten eggs with mushrooms and leeks and a bit of salt, though I forgot to add milk to the eggs.

For convenience all of the food was placed on the table at once, but for the main course I made roast “boar” with cumin and boiled “ostrich,” using pork and chicken drumsticks for convenience. The pork was baked with salt, pepper, and cumin. About halfway through I turned it over and put a bit of oil in the bottom of the pan to keep what had been the top side from drying out. After the meat was finished I deglazed the pan with a bit of water and a few tablespoons of grape juice concentrate (a convenient substitute for reduced wine), which combined with the juice to make a sauce.

The sauce recipe for the “ostrich” was similar, but combining pre-boiled meat with a sauce that contained stock seemed a bit redundant, so I tried to sear off and braise the drumsticks in the Dutch oven to make the stock myself before adding the other ingredients. While this sort of worked, I should have done this in a larger pan in the oven where I could put them in a single layer. I ended up having to add a lot of water to the pot to cover the chicken, which seemed to dilute the sauce too much. Still, as the meat cooked I added thyme, mint, celery seed, mustard, vinegar, and grape juice concentrate, as well as a bit of chicken soup base to compensate for the extra water. While the sauce did not reduce to the thickness I had hoped for, it still worked well enough.

Finally, for dessert I made a honey ricotta cheesecake and put in on a cake stand surrounded by red and green grapes that we had in the refrigerator. The table was filled and everything looked good. The moment of reckoning had arrived.

Overall, this was the most successful feast yet. The texture of the omelet would have probably been better if I had remembered to add the milk, but the dish was still pretty good. The salad was quite a hit, though I had been a bit skeptical of the recipe at first since it called for pounding the ingredients with a mortar and pestle (I simply chopped the vegetables as finely as I could by hand). The pork and chicken were both really tender and tasted good, in spite of the issues with the sauce for the chicken. Dessert was good as well, though the texture of the cheesecake might take some people a while to get used to.

After this experience, it seems clear that Romans with the means to do so dined quite well. I can think of three possible reasons why this has been the most successful feast so far. 1) Culinary technique had advanced and built on earlier practices, improving since the Sumerians and Egyptians. 2) The Romans left more recipes (or at least more recipes have survived), making less guesswork necessary to fill in the blanks. Or 3) I am getting the hang of this. While this feast was more ambitious than the first two and took more effort, it was worth it. Hopefully I can do another one over spring break (Viking? Aztec? Ancient Chinese? Medieval?), but in the meantime I look forward to it.