Banquets, Fact or Fiction?

A large majority of people when they imagine Roman food will automatically think about the lavish banquets of the rich upper class citizens, and may exclude the eating habits of a normal Roman citizen. And it is obvious why they do so. A large majority of modern day literature, TV and film focuses on the lavish banquets thrown by emperors or high class citizens. So in this blog post I want to go back see how accurate these banquets were by looking at how they were presented in ancient sources, alongside with some simple facts about banquets.

Facts:

• A banquet would take place in the Romans house  of the rich and elite or sometimes a social club called a ‘Collegia‘.
• They were held in a ‘Triclinium’, which was a room with 3 sofas shaped in a ‘U’ shape.
• Opposite to what how a modern person to eat, the Romans would eat lying on their sides.
  
  

  
• Unlike the Greek banquets, known as a ‘Symposium’, women were allowed to attend and it is thought that children sometimes did too, in order to educate them in social etiquette.
• Banquets weren’t just about food. Entertainment was massively important, whether that was the dramatic presentation of the food, a trip to the baths or more traditional ideas of entertainment such as poetry reading or dancing. In BBC documentary: ‘The Supersizers eat… Ancient Rome’ it is said that ‘banquets were as much about theatre as they were about the food itself.’
• It is a well-known joke that the Romans would eat so much that they would vomit, just to allow themselves to carry on eating. But this was in fact true. Seneca, an ancient philosopher from the 1^st century BC, said ‘they vomit that they may eat, they eat that they may vomit, and they do not deign even to digest the feasts for which they ransack the whole world.’ [Seneca, Book XII to Helvia His Mother on Consolation].
• Vomiting so that you could eat more food is a totally alien concept to a modern audience, but it was so common in ancient Rome because of emperors such as Nero who promoted gluttony and being greedy.
• Many people nowadays associate the vomiting tradition with the term ‘vomitorium’ however this has just become connected to being sick due to the nature of the two words being similar. However a vomitorium is actually a tunnelled exit or entrance pathway in either a Roman theatre of amphitheatre, therefore has no real connection to vomiting.
  

  
• Banquets were often associated with the ‘Golden age’ or the ‘agrarian era’. This was the idea of Roman greatness through the strength of their agriculture and the idea of self-sufficiency. The term ‘Golden age’ was often associated with Rome under the control of Augustus and in Virgil’s ‘Aeneid’ there is a strong focus on the prosperity of the land which would later for Rome. For this reason banquets where the host could prove that he had produced the food that the guests were eating were highly admirable.
• Banquets were all about showing wealth, it is thought that on some occasions a host would get their staff to prepare food which would just act as a decorative feature and was not intended to be eaten.
• Originally there were laws about how much you could spend on a meal, but as the empire grew and the population became wealthier and wealthier this was abandoned, especially under emperors such as Nero.
• Similarly to this, a lot of the knowledge we have about Roman food comes from when politicians would try to ban a ‘luxury food’ item, but these bans never lasted long
• The night before a gladiator would go into the arena he had a special feast called a ‘Cena Libera’
• The majority of wealthy people would not eat in restaurants as they were associated with the lower classes.
• The emperor Elagabalus, supposedly suffocated his banquet guests by covering them with flower petals as told in The Historia Augusta: ‘In a banqueting-room with a reversible ceiling he once buried his parasites in violets and other flowers, so that some were actually smothered to death, being unable to crawl out to the top’.
  

  The Roses of Heliogabalus by Alma-Tadema (1888)

  The Satyricon

• One of the most well-known descriptions of a Roman banquet comes from Petronius’ ‘The Satyricon’. ‘The Satyricon’ is one of the few surviving Roman novels. Despite the fact that it is heavily fragmented it still tells us a lot about Roman life, even if we do have to take it slightly with a pinch of salt due to its satirical nature.
• The novel follows the life of Encolpius, the narrator, his slave turned lover boy, Giton, and their friend Ascyltus.
• One of the major surviving sections of the novel is a chapter called ‘Trimalchio’s Cena.’ The section describes the lavish banquet thrown by an incredibly wealthy freedman called Trimalchio.
• As part of his dinner party Trimalchio has all kinds of entertainment, from his presentation of food, to the use of his personal baths and the performances from exotic dancers.
• The food he serves his guests is incredibly lavish and extravagant. Just some of the course that are featured within the banquet are:
  • Live birds sown into a pig
  • Wooden hens surrounded by fake pastry eggs which were filled with quails in a peppered yellow sauce
  • A dish which represented each zodiac sign
  • Roast dormice in honey and poppy seeds, served on a bridge
  • Fish which were presented to look as if they were swimming in a peppered sauce
  • A roasted pig, which was stuffed with sausages so that when the pig was cut open it would look as if the pig had not been gutted or cooked properly. The Pig was also surrounded by a pastry piglet for each guest which were supposed to look as if they were suckling from the pig.
• With these just being some of the many dishes we can see how much food would have been laid on by Trimalchio for his guests. It also shows us just how dramatically the food was presented.

Similar to the presentation of Trimalchio’s cena is the lavish banquet of the priests of Julius Caesar.

• Between 74 and 69BC 11 priests held a banquet which was attended by Julius Caesar.
• The occasion was a lavish affair; instead of the traditional triclinium sofas the priest had ebony benches for the guests to lie on.
• Like in Trimalchio’s cena, some of the wives of the priest were present alongside some Mothers-in-laws, and 4 vestal Virgins.
• The cena started with sea urchins, oysters, clams, mussels, thrushes under a thatch of asparagus, a fattened chicken, patina of oysters and clams, and black and white ‘piddocks’
• The second course consisted of; more mussels, clam, sea anemones,  loins of roe deer and wild boar, and fowls force-fed with wheat-meal
• The main course consisted of udder, split head of wild boar, patina of fish, patina of udders, ducks, roast teal, hares, roast fowl, and bread

(Details all from Dalby’s ‘Empire of Pleasures’. Although he says that all of his information comes from Macrobius’ Saturnalia 13.10)

In comparison to this is the banquet presented by Pollux in ‘Daily conversations in Greek Latin’

• 2 aperitifs were offered:
  • Spiced wine or concentrated grape juice mixed with hot or cold water
  • A small boiled marrow, served with a pepper sauce
• This was followed by 2 options for a cold course:
  • Foie gras, thrushes, and bread
  • Satsum (salted meat or fish), sardines and broad beans
• Finally the hot course consisted of: Fowl rapatum with fish sauce, roast chicken,  roast suckling pig, alongside a platter of endive, radishes, mint, green olives, cheese, truffles and mushrooms.

Therefore by comparing the 3 different banquets above, we can see just how different a banquet could be, yet all of them do share the theme that they are extremely lavish with numerous different courses, which matches the presentation which we often seen within modern portrayals of banquets.

Parthian Chicken

A very simple chicken dish, although not necessarily Roman. As you can tell from the title of the dish, it has Parthian origins, because of the use of asafoetida which is a very traditional Middle Eastern spice. Parthia and the rest of the eastern Roman Empire were hugely important for supplying different kinds of herbs and spices throughout the empire, and as a result a lot of Apicius’ recipes contain ingredients which have origins from the Roman East.

However the use of Caraway seeds was a very typical Roman ingredient in recipes as it was common to Europe. It is for this reason that we get an interesting combination of ingredients to create this semi-Roman dish.

The Original recipe came from Apicius who wrote

‘Draw the chicken from the rear and cut into quarters. Pound the pepper, lovage, a little caraway, pour on liquamen, flavour with wine. Arrange the chicken in a ceramic dish, put the sauce over the chicken. Dissolve fresh laser in warm water and put it straight away on the chicken and cook. Sprinkle with pepper and serve.’

For a modern audience there are a number of terms within this recipe which may be considered confusing, or that they would not understand for example: ‘lovage,’ ‘liquamen’ and ‘laser.’ Which then posed the question of how this recipe could be recreated for a modern audience.

After a bit of research I was able to find out that laser was a spice known as silphium.  Silphium was preliminarily used as a form of medicine, but it was then added in to food due to its flavour. It was incredibly popular in the east, at one point it was even considered so valuable by the Romans that it should be stored in the state treasury alongside the gold and silver. Due to its popularity, however, it became extinct. Numerous years’ later recipes were found containing a spice called asafoetida, which had very similar characteristics to the silphium, so it is thought to be the same thing, hence why I have substituted it into this recipe. While asafoetida is not as common today, it has become incredibly popular in Indian cooking but known as hing. The rich yellow colour is great for creating the vibrancy associated with curry, but primarily the reason for the popularity behind ‘hing’ is it flavour which has been likened to a mix between onions, leeks and garlic alongside a spiciness used in Indian cooking. Because of this unique flavour combination in many languages the spice became known as ‘devils dung,’ and I must say I would not recommend take a powerful sniff of it, as it can be a bit overwhelming to the senses! However due to its popularity in Indian cooking it is still possible to be bought in shops today; it is stocked in most large supermarkets by Schwartz.

Lovage, another foreign term to a modern audience is a herb which was commonly used, especially by Apicius. Although lovage is still around nowadays, I wouldn’t go as far as saying it is a well-known herb. It is possible to still grow and use lovage, but for those of you who don’t fancy trying to grow an ancient Roman herb, just for the one use in this recipe, then parsley creates a hugely similar flavour.

Finally liquamen is similarly another term for garum or fish sauce (which we have already seen in my ‘The original Cheesecake- Sweet or Savoury, Part 2’ blog post).

 

Ingredients:

4 Chicken Breasts

Ground Black Pepper

170 ml Red Wine

1tsp Fish Sauce

½ tsp Asafoetida Powder or 5 drops of Asafoetida Tincture

2 tsp chopped Parsley

1 tsp Caraway Seeds

 

Method:

• Preheat oven to 190 fan/ gas mark 5
  

  All of the ingredients in a casserole dish, pre cooking

• Place chicken breast in a casserole dish and add a sprinkle of pepper
• Combine the rest of the ingredients and then add to the casserole dish
• Cover the casserole dish and place in the oven for an hour
• Remove the lid of the casserole dish for the final 15 minutes in order to brown the chicken slightly

 

 

Mid-Way through the cooking process

It may not look glamorous, but it tastes good!

Final Product

Thoughts:

Getting the proportions right in when recreating a recipe can be incredibly difficult, and it certainly proved challenging here. Much like most ancient recipes there is little to no instruction about the quantity of the ingredient to use. Therefore when recreating a dish it is very important to take all the different flavours into account.

When I first made this dish I used far too many caraway seeds and fish sauce, which combined with the wine and parsley created a strange flavour, because it was almost as if the caraway and fish sauce were competing to be the most over powering flavour. So I refined these a little, reducing both of the quantities, which created a much more enjoyable flavour for the chicken.

I simply served the chicken with on a bed of colourful rice, however this lead me to question how the Roman’s would have eaten meals like this: did they have side dishes, or would the chicken by itself have been a meal on its own. Nowhere in Apicius’ work is there a mention of an addition part of the meal, such as rice. Which provided the idea that maybe they would have just eaten the chicken without anything else. While in modern cooking the majority of dishes come with a side of potatoes, rice, or maybe pasta it seems like this would have been unlikely for the Romans.

• It is thought that rice would have been present within the Roman Empire, but it would have been very rare as it was imported from Egypt, however there are no remains or obvious connections to rice anywhere in antiquity.
• A lot of people who have no knowledge of food history may think that due to the starchy and carby nature of potatoes they would have been perfect for a Roman and medieval diet, however potatoes were not widely used until the 18^th century when they had been brought

Therefore that leads us to think that it is likely that for Romans, who were rich enough to afford meat, this would have been all they had for their meal, with the chance of it being accompanied with some vegetables or bread. But there is no sense of having a side dish to complete the meal.

Apicius

We have a limited number of ancient sources left that actually tell us recipes from the Ancient world, however one that survives is Apicius, however we also know very little about the works and the author.

• Apicius has become a term known for a work of ancient recipes which has survived over time. I has been given the name Apicius because of a famous glutton called Marcus Gavius Apicius who is thought to have written it.
• Apicius is thought to have been writing in early first century AD because we have sources who tell us about dinner parties held by him with guests that we know were consuls in 28AD.
• We also have a Martial epigraphy which links Apicius with a person called Maecenas, who is thought to be one of Augustus’ close friends.
  • Therefore we can work out a rough date of when Apicius was around.

Apicius, himself, is never presented very well by other writers. The sources who wrote about Apicius provide us with huge amounts of information due to the nature in which they say certain things. They are also the principle reason why we have any information about him.

• Apicius never actually wrote about himself, or included his personal opinions in his recipe book.
• Juvenal wrote: ‘Apicius was the author of how to arrange dinners, who wrote about sauces: for he was an exemplar of a glutton.’ Which reinforces that the same Apicius who was associated with member of the senate in the first century was the same person who wrote these recipes.
• In 160AD we have a reference in Athenaeus to a lost work by Apion called ‘On the Luxury of Apicius’ which we can presume was about the same Apicius seeing as Apion was writing in the first century AD, around the same time as Apicius.

Some sources tell us more about his personality that anything else as Apicius was renowned for being highly extravagant and greedy.

• Juvenal writes ‘The common people find nothing funnier than a poor Apicius’.
• It is also thought that it was due to lavish life style and excessive banquet that he became bankrupt and then killed himself.
• He has even been described as ‘a figure of mythical status’.
  

 

Structure of the book

• The structure of Apicius book is very familiar because it is divided into different types of food, for example meat dishes, vegetables, fowl, luxury dishes and fish, to mention just a few.
• The first chapter of the book is unique, because it does not contain normal recipes. Instead the chapter focuses on ‘mise en place’ which loosely translates to ‘putting in place’ therefore preparing the food.
• This section contains 35 different (what I refer to as) “How to” dishes, as the large majority of them focus on how to preserve different ingredients, or how to make different sauces to accompany dishes.
• Some of the methods within this section may be considered strange to a modern reader, because it is something we never have to deal with due to modern technology.
• However there are a number of methods which might still be useful for readers today.

One example of these methods is the recipe for Spiced wine.

‘1.1 Spiced wine surprise: 15lb of honey by weight is put into bronze pan containing 2 pints of wine so that the honey and wine cook together. Warm the pan on a gentle fire of dry wood and stir with sticks as it cooks. If it begins to boil it is settled with sparkling wine, besides which it ill subside when it is removed from the fire. When it has cooled down, it is heated again. This will be done a second and third time, and then at last it is removed from the hearth, and it is skimmed the day after. Then put in 4oz of ground pepper; 3 scruples of mastic; one dragma each of folium and saffron; 5 roasted date stones and the dates themselves softened in wine of the same kind and quality, added in beforehand so that a smooth paste is produced. When all these are ready you pour on 18 pints of smooth wine. Charcoal is put in when it is finished (to avert the sour taste).’

This may be considered complicated to a modern audience, but that is because it would have been to a roman audience too. Other recipes for spiced wine which have been found are much simpler and featured fewer ingredients and a less complicated method of production. However because of Apicius’ extravagant nature his recipes often reflect this. Here the tradition recipe for spiced wine or Mulsum is more like a conditum which is a spiced wine with a lot more honey and flavours. Due to the sweetness of the drink it was often served as an aperitif just like how nowadays many people choose to serve a form of fruit Bellini’s at a dinner party as an aperitif.

The remains of a sign for a wine shop in Herculaneum 

Other sections of the Mise en Place give details about much simpler things such as; ‘1.10 how to make salted meat sweet: you may make salted meat sweet if you cook it first in milk and afterwards in water.’ Which is a method still used today especially with the fish dishes; poached haddock and mackerel. The section also includes basic ‘how to’ methods about food such as how to tell if honey has gone off.

These were just some of the many basic instructions given out by Apicius which shows us that he must have considered them significant things for people to know. This passing on of simple knowledge is similar to what we see in numerous modern-day cookbooks. A large majority of popular cookbooks in the modern Britain feature a ‘how to’ section, featuring a wide spectrum of topics, ranging from lifestyle tips such as; ‘How to use the book’, or ‘How to keep little mouths happy’, or ‘How to tell the difference between good and bad carbs’; to basic cooking methods such as; ‘How to make short crust pastry’ and ‘How to make the perfect buttercream.’ So the idea of a ’Mise en Place’ is something that is still present in a lot of cook books today, although we have to give the credit to Apicius for being the first one to categorise it in such a way.

The Original Cheesecake… Sweet or Savoury? (part 2)

As we have already seen with the sweet cheesecake recipe, the tradition Roman recipe shows us that it is easy to use one recipe to create two completely different recipes, which is what I decided to do.

This time I decided to swap the ricotta cheese for feta in order to create a more savoury cheesier flavour in order to contrast the mild ricotta cheesecakes. I also chose to increase the amount of bay leaves to intensify the flavour, making it seem like a completely different dish to the sweet cheesecake balls.

The final alteration to the traditional recipe was to change the way it was baked. Whilst in the previous recipe I create 4 individual balls of dough, this time I chose to create a more traditionally Roman loaf shape, a round shape with 6 slits across the top, similar to that of the image below. This change meant that I need to increase the cooking time to 35 minutes.

Ingredients:

120g/ 4oz plain flour

340g/ 12oz feta cheese (rinse slightly before use)

1 medium egg

6 bay leaves

 

Method:

• Preheat the oven to 225 fan/ gas mark 7
• Break up feta and place in a food processor. Blitz for 30 seconds or until it begins to look smooth instead of crumbly
• Add the flour and the egg and process until the mixture resembles a soft dough, ensuring all the ingredients are well combined.
• Line a baking tray with greaseproof paper, place the bay leaves in a circular pattern on top of the greaseproof paper
• Shape the dough into a circular loaf and make 3 slits along the top of the dough in order to create 6 mini segments. Transfer to the prepared baking tray.
• Place a cover over the baking tray and bake for 35 minutes or until golden brown
• Leave to cool slightly. Serve either warm or cold.

Combination of the flour, egg and feta

So it may not look the greatest, but oh well!

Straight out of the oven

Served as a starter

My Thoughts:

I made this recipe several times because I didn’t think the first attempt was quite right, so I decided to alter a couple of things. The first time I made the cheesecake I found it was far too salty, so on the next attempt I decided to reduce the amount of feta used, and rinse the feta before I used it in order to get rid of some of the brine that the cheese came in. This was a great improvement and the cheesecake was much nicer because you could taste more of the flavours from the ingredients because the dish wasn’t over powered by salt.

This led me to think about how the Romans would have eaten it. In the ancient world salt was a hugely important ingredient. This is mainly because they had to use salt as a way of preserving meats and fish, therefore a lot of the basic foods they would have used within a meal were already covered in salt. On top of this is the role that garum or fish sauce played within cooking. Fish sauce was a stable to the majority of Roman food. To make garum you had to combine fish guts and basically let them stew. As a result it created a pretty pungent smell, the smell got so bad that it is thought at certain times the production of garum within the city was banned. As you can imagine the garum added a lot of flavour to a dish, however the main flavour it created was salt.

Therefore we see that many Roman recipes were extremely high in salt. It is even thought that Romans would have added more salt to some meals just to take away the taste of the dish itself, especially if it contained rotting meat.

In Roman times this kind of cheesecake would have been served as a gustatio or a starter. It was most likely served by itself but accompanied with olives, or other forms of snacks. So when I recreated the dish I paired it with olives and hummus, although I also found that it worked very well within salads as a form of croton.

 

Conclusion:

The most beneficial thing I learnt from both the sweet and savoury adaptions of the original recipe by Cato is that we can interpret one recipe in a number of different ways. The lack of instruction or measurements in the ancient recipe has made it possible to use the same method and basic ingredients but to produce two completely different end results. I would go as far as saying just making 1 change to the cheese made a huge difference. This illustrates how difficult it can be to interpret these recipes and recreate them today.

 

The Original Cheesecake… Sweet or Savoury? (part 1)

Cheesecake is the modern term for what would have been known by the Romans as Libum, consisted of a mixture of cheese, flour and egg. Typically the cakes would be given to the gods as a form of worship and dedication, especially revolving around sacrifice. Ovid best emphasis this which is descriptions of Libum;

‘Cakes are made for the gods.’ (Fasti 3.735)

However this recipe has survived from Cato’s On Agriculture when he describes the basic recipe for a cheese based cake:

‘Grind 2 pounds of cheese thoroughly in a mortar; when it is thoroughly macerated, add 1 pound of wheat flour, or, if you wish the cake to be more dainty, 1/2 pound of fine flour, and mix thoroughly with the cheese. Add 1 egg, and work the whole well. Pat out a loaf, place on leaves, and bake slowly on a warm hearth under a crock.’(De Agriculture 75)

In this recipe there is no specification about the type of cheese needed. This opens the recipe up to several possibilities, for example having a sweet or savoury flavour. But the basis behind the recipe for my cheesecake is a combination of both Ovid and Cato libum due to the addition of honey and use of a neutrally flavoured cheese. In Ovid’s Fasti he writes all about the discovery of honey by Bacchus and the other gods. In book 3 he also writes about the luxury of honey, and tells us that it was added to traditional libum to make it more pleasing for the gods:

‘The father god enjoys honey, and it is right that we should give to its discoverer golden honey infused in hot cakes’ (Fasti 3.761)

For all these reasons I was able to create this recipe to match the idea of a sweet cheesecake.

Ingredients:

120g/ 4oz Plain Flour

225g/ 8oz Ricotta

1 Egg

4 Bay Leaves

120g/ 4oz Runny Honey

Method:

• Preheat oven to 225 fan/ gas mark 7
• Sift flour into a bowl
• Beat the cheese until smooth and then combine with the flour. Add the egg to this mix
• Stir the mixture together until it resembles a sticky dough, adding a bit more flour if the mixture is too wet
• Once the mixture resembles a dough, divide into 4 balls. Place the bay leaves onto a greased baking tray, then add the dough on top
• Cover the dough in a testum fashion (see notes further down on instructions about this)
• Bake for 25-30 minutes
• Whilst the cakes are still hot, scour holes in the surface
• Finally melt the honey in a microwave and then pour over the top of the cakes. Leave for 10 minutes before serving

After baking

Application of honey

Final result

My thoughts:

Whilst nice, the cheesecake was not what I or any of my testers had expected after hearing the word cheesecake. Instead of the 21st century  concept of a cheesecake- a biscuit base and having a rich, creamy, and sweet topping- the Roman cheesecake functions more as a dough or a dumpling with a very dense and close texture.

However this recipe for cheesecake may not have been thought of as odd if I had served it to an Italian audience. Even today, authentic Italian cheesecake recipes vary significantly from what we know, love and buy from our supermarkets. Just like how New York has a distinct style of baked cheesecake, Italy does too, and it is typically made out ricotta and little else, just like this traditional Roman recipe. In fact numerous recipes can be found online, just like this, or sometimes with the addition of what we would recognise as a biscuit base. American celebrity chef Martha Stewart has even written a recipe for her website which is incredible similar, despite the fact that it features a small amount of sugar, and orange vest to add extra flavour alongside the bay leaf.

The idea of pairing the cheesecake with orange was common in many of the modern recipes I looked at, due to the fact that citrus fruits are readily available in Italy. However for an ancient audience I imagine that a Roman cook might have pairing the cheesecake with fruits such as fig and apricot due to the sharp nature of the fruit contrasting the sweetness of the honey glaze.

One of the tricky areas of this recipe was the way in which it needs to be cooked. Traditionally a cheesecake like this would have been cooked by placing red hot coals over a testum (pot) which created a hot oven. However this is incredibly difficult to recreate due to the nature of modern ovens. But Dalby and Grainger in ‘The Classical Cookbook‘, suggest in their recipe for barley rolls that this can be done by placing a casserole dish (or any other form of oven-safe dish) or even a plant pot over the top of a baking tray. This would have helped to create a similar technique as how the cheesecakes would have been cooked authentically. It is also thought that traditional testum would have contained a hole at the top, so that air could circulate around helping the cooking process. Therefore in my recipe I  used a large casserole dish, which I took off during the penultimate 5 minutes in the oven, to allow the dough to crisp up as I presume it would have done when baked in a testum.

Overall I  would consider the recreation of a sweet Roman cheesecake to be easy to do, as none of the methods or ingredients that are involved are too different from a modern style of cooking. I think it’s also  significant that modern recipes can still be found in Italy and also across the world, therefore showing how successful the legacy of Cato’s recipe is.