ANCIENT CUISINE - GREEK AND ROMAN

Greek Cuisine 

1. Between 800 BCE and 500 BCE, people preferred their food unadorned, favouring cooking methods such as spit-roasting. Complicated techniques and rich and sticky sauces were held in disdain.

2. Other Greeks, however, held one item in more disdain than anything else. This was the black broth drunk by the Spartans, made from meat stock, vinegar and salt.

3. By the fifth century BCE, chickens were quite popular in ancient Greece. Their eggs were a part of the common person's diet. If one was in a better financial situation, then they most likely use goose or peacock eggs.

4. Meals were often eaten al fresco and people did not want to spend the majority of their time with the meal. After all, at the symposia, the object was socializing.

5. Some specialties: a pig which had died from gluttony and geese force-fed with moistened grain.

A recipe similar to this was supposedly devised by the writer and historian HERODOTUS:

Herodotu's Pudding

100g/4oz fresh breadcumbs
50g/2oz self raising flour
100g/4oz suet
225g/8oz raisins
2 eggs, beaten
2 dried figs, chopped
1tsp allspice
Grated rind of 1/2 lemon
2tbsp sherry or sweet red wine
A little milk

Mix together the flour, breadcrumbs, suet, dried fruit, lemon rind and spice. Add the eggs and sherry, and enough milk to make a soft, dropping consistency. Place in a buttered heatproof basin and cover with a piece of foil, with a pleat to allow it to expand during cooking. Place in a large, lidded saucepan, filled with boiling water to halfway up the side of the pudding basin. Steam for 3 to 4 hours, topping up the water in the saucepan if it is in danger of boiling dry. Serve hot with a sweet sauce or (if you are not worried about being authentic) custard.

Roman Cuisine 

1. Dormice were kept in jars called gliaria and were fattened on acorns and chestnuts.

2. Liquamen, one of the most infamous Roman sauces, was made from fermented fish entrails. There were liquamen factories in Pompeii, Antibes and Leptis Magna.

3. Snails, to ensure their succulence, were fed spelt wheat, milk and wine. When they were almost full-grown, they were transferred to jars with airholes. When they were so fat that they could not retreat into their shells, they were fried and served with wine and liquamen

4. The Roman breakfast (jentaculum) consisted of bread and fruit, lunch (prandium) was salad, bread--dipped in milk or wine-- and fruit, and the main meal was the cena

5. Quite often, the Romans liked to 'dress up' their meals. A hare might be given wings so that it would look like Pegasus, a quince could be given thorns to look like a hedgehog and roast pork could be dressed as song-birds, goose or fish

 Stuffed Dormice

1 whole dormouse + extra dormouse meat, minced
Minced pork
Pine kernels
Pepper
Liquamen (substitute with anchovy essence)
Pound together all of the ingredients except for the whole dormouse. Then use this to stuff the dormouse. Sew the dormouse up, and bake.

Martial, Epigrams, 2.37

Whatever is placed on the table, you sweep up from all sides: teats from a sow's udder and the ribs of a pig, and a meadow bird carved for two, and half a mullet, and a whole pike and the side of a moray, and the leg of a chicken, and a pigeon dripping with a sauce made from grits. You hide these things in your greasy napkin and give them to your slave to carry home. The rest of us recline at the table, relaxed and inattentive. If you have any shame, Caecilianus, return my food. I didn't invite you for dinner also tomorrow!

*Romans brought their own napkins to dinner parties.

Saved from http://www.oocities.org/athens/aegean/7849/cuisine.html at 23/6/2004 and not available anymore. Adapted and illustrated to be posted by Leopoldo Costa.