#culinary archaeology
Io Saturnalia! The Roman celebration of the end of the year, Saturnalia, is next week! So celebrate another end of another year, I’m making a simple baked treat to serve for any saturnalia celebrations you have planned - a quick and easy Dulcia Piperata (as recorded by Apicius)
In any case, let’s now take a look at The World That Was! Follow along with my YouTube video, above! Check out my Patreon for more!
Ingredients
1 cup / 150g flour
2 eggs
½ tsp ground rosemary
75 g chopped almonds
2tsp ground pepper
100 ml sweet white wine (or grape juice)
2 tbsp honey
Milk
75g Chopped hazelnuts
Method:
1 - Mix Dry Ingredients
Toss about a cup of flour in a bowl. Add in some rosemary, a couple teaspoons of ground pepper, and about 75g of chopped almonds to the bowl. Mix everything together, just so it’s all evenly mixed. Rosemary is a commonly-found herb in the Mediterranean, and found it’s way into Roman cooking in a variety of dishes! I’m using plain white wheat flour, but wholemeal wheat or spelt would have also been used here.
2 - Mix the Other Ingredients
Next, crack two eggs into a measuring jugs, before adding your wine (or grape juice, if you’re not using alcohol), and milk. Add in enough milk to bring the total volume of liquid up to about 450ml. Pour the jug of liquid ingredients into the dry ingredients and mix well. The whole thing will be like a pancake batter. If it’s too thin, add a few more tablespoons of flour, and if it’s too thick, add a little more milk!
3 - Bake
Next, prepare a baking tin by wiping some olive oil over the sides and base of it! Pour the mixture into your tin. Bake at 190ºC / 375ºF for about 30 minutes. It should be done when a skewer comes out clean when the centre of it is poked. Take it out, and let the whole thing cool down in the baking dish. It may collapse a little, but this is totally fine and to be expected!
4 - Finish
When the cake is still warm, spread some honey over the top and sprinkle it with chopped hazelnuts and a few whole hazelnuts. The honey will caramelise a little at the edge of the dish, which adds a lovely deep flavour to the whole thing!
Serve up warm with another spoon of honey, and dig in!
The finished dish is super light and sweet, with a tangy undertone from the wine! The honey drizzled over the top infuses into the body of the cake, resulting in a springy, sponge-like cross-section! The rosemary adds a lovely woody kick to each slice, and pairs wonderfully with the taste of the white wine!
This week, I’m going to be making a quick and easy rice pudding dessert, recorded in a 14th century Neapolitan cookbook - the Cuoco Napoletano! Rice began being used in medieval Europe intensively around the 9th or 10th centuries AD - though evidence for it’s cultivation in the Eastern Mediterranean date back to Alexander the Great’s conquests into Asia.
In any case, let’s now take a quick look at The World That Was! Follow along with my YouTube video, above!
Ingredients (makes 4 portions)
2 cups rice
4 cups almond milk
1 cup sugar
saffron
Method
1 - Wash and Cook Rice
To begin with, we need to cook some rice. I used basmati rice, but Arborio or other, fatter-grained rice would have been used in antiquity as well! Begin by washing a couple of cups of rice in some cold water. Move the grains around with your hands, to get rid of excess starch. When the water runs clear, place your rice in a pot, and fill up with cold water until the rice is just about submerged.
Place your pot over a high heat until the water boils. Let everything cook until the rice is almost done - but not quite ready. Take it off the heat and let it cool down.
2 - Prepare Saffron
Next, rehydrate your saffron a little. Do this by letting it sit in some boiling water for a few minutes. Saffron is VERY expensive, so you can of course skip this step - it’s really only to add colour, and a slight woody taste - to the finished dish!
3 - Prepare the Milk
While your rice is cooling, go pour about 4 cups of almond milk into a saucepan, along with a cup’s worth of sugar. Bring this to a boil over a medium heat. The original recipe tells you how to make almond milk as well, by combining ground almonds with water. Keep your sugar and milk mixture stirring occasionally, while you wait for it to boil.
4 - Combine Ingredients
When the almond milk is at a rolling boil, turn the heat down to low and let it simmer away. Add in your cooled rice back into the pot, along with your rehydrated saffron! Mix everything together, and let it cook for another ten to twenty minutes. Or until your rice is lovely and soft, and stays in a soft mound when you pile it up with a spoon.
Serve up either warm or at room temperature, and dig in!
The finished dish is quite simple, yet very sweet! The three main ingredients - rice, almonds, and sugar - would have been readily available in many medieval Mediterranean markets - particularly in those markets at the conflux of trade routes, such as along the Italian coast.
The original recipe also mentions that other kinds of milk can be used when making this - such as goat milk. However, it neglects to mention that if you use those kinds of milk, stirring it when it’s coming to a boil could cause curds to form - making it more like a kind of cheese, rather than pudding.
Today, I’ll be taking a look at a Roman recipe, recorded by Apicius, which was likely eaten at contemporary roadside eateries in the Roman Empire - the simple isicia omentata - or what is basically a Roman burger patty! The end result is like a spiced and fragrant meatloaf!
In any case, lets now take a look at The World That Was! Follow along with my YouTube video above! If you like my recipes, consider checking out my Patreon!
Ingredients (for 5-6 burgers)
500g minced meat (beef, pork, lamb would be most fitting here)
100g breadcrumbs
2 cups wine (white or rose would work best)
100g pine nuts
50g black pepper
Method
1 - Soak the Breadcrumbs
To begin with, we need to soak 100g of breadcrumbs in a cup or two of wine. This is to add some moisture to the finished isicia, and to help pad out the meat. In antiquity, stale bread would have been used here, as it was a simple way to make the most out of every loaf of bread.
If your breadcrumbs look a little dry, add a bit more wine until it’s all damp.
2 - Mix the Ingredients
Now we need to place 500g of minced meat into a bowl, along with our soaked breadcrumbs. Keep in mind that the texture of minced meat today is more cohesive than what would have been made in antiquity! A mortar and pestle would have done the work on finely-chopped pieces of meat, becoming what’s known as “forcemeat”. But modern ground meat works well!
I used beef here, but ground pork or lamb (or even goat) would have been used in antiquity. The original recipe simply calls for “meat”, so to the readers of the time, the kind of meat would have been obvious! (such as hamburgers today being made from beef)
In any case, mix everything together in a bowl. Toss in about 100g of pine nuts, and 50g of whole black peppercorns, mixing to combine.
3 - Form the Isicia and cook
When your mixture is combined, take a small handful of it in your hands and form it into a patty. Each one should be about 1/5th of the mix (based on how I made them anyway, you can make them larger or smaller than mine). Place each one onto a frying pan with a little olive oil, and let it cook away over high heat for about 5-10 minutes, before flipping them over and letting the other side cook for the same amount of time. (The time it takes to cook them depends on how thick you make them)
When they’re done, serve up on a bed of arugula or rocket, or another edible green of your choice, and eat alongside a bit of bread!
The finished isicia are super light and flavourful! Each mouthful has a bite of heat from the peppercorns, along with a sweet, nutty flavour from the pine nuts! The breadcrumbs soaked in wine gives us a bit of sharpness, depending on the kind of wine you used.
While it’s unknown exactly how these were served in antiquity, it’s not unlikely that they were paired with bread and edible greens, as both of these would be readily available and filling sides for a meat dish like this! Based on earlier Italian cuisines (i.e. Etruscan), stale bread may have been used as a plate of sorts, which would then have been eaten after the main dish (the stale bread turning soft when soaked with the oils from the meat).
Today, I’ll be taking a look at another recipe from 13th century Syria - and the anonymously written Scents and Flavours Arabic cookbook - the creamy chicken Jurjaniyyah!
The name Jurjaniyyah is derived from an Iranian region - Gorgan - which suggests that this was an imported culinary style, rather than a local recipe! Either way, it’s a fairly simple and tasty dish!
In any case, lets now take a look at The World That Was! Follow along with my YouTube video, above!
Ingredients (Serves 4)
500g yoghurt
½ tablespoon flour dissolved in 1 tablespoon water
½ tablespoon honey
2 tablespoons mustard seeds
ground cumin
250g chicken thighs (or cut of your choice)
Method
1 - Bake the Chicken
To begin with, we need to cook our chicken. To do this, season a few thighs of chicken with salt, pepper, and freshly-ground cumin. I’m cooking the meat separately to the sauce, which is unusual for meat-based recipes in this time period - but this is seemingly how the dish was intended to be prepared!
In any case, bake or roast your chicken at 200C for about 30 minutes, or until it’s cooked through!
When it’s cooked, take it out of the oven and let it rest while you make your sauce.
2 - Make the Sauce
Next, we need to make our sauce. Start by placing 500g of Greek yoghurt into a saucepan. Into this, toss a slurry of 1 tbsp flour and 1tbsp water - this will help prevent the sauce curdling as it cooks. Place this over a high heat, and stir it. Contemporary Arabic cookbooks emphasise that you should stir this in a single direction, to reduce the risk of curdling. So stir it until you start to see bubbles forming at the edge.
At this point, turn the heat down to medium, and let it foam up and froth away for about 10 minutes.
3 - Assemble Dish
After 10 minutes, pour in a tablespoon of honey, and a couple of tablespoons of mustard seeds. The original recipe describes the dish as being very pungent, so you can adjust this by increasing or decreasing the amount of seeds you add here!
Place your chicken on a plate, and ladle on some of your sauce. Serve up warm and dig in!
The finished dish is super fragrant, and each mouthful of the sauce has a sharp bite of heat thanks to the mustard seeds. In a sense, it’s almost like horseradish! But overall, it’s more fragrant than it is hot - and acts very creamy!
Mustard seeds have been cultivated throughout the Near East for millennia, and had a variety of uses besides the culinary field. However the popularity of this seed as an ingredient seems to have increased following the occupation of the region by the Roman Empire - as well as subsequent empires and caliphates.
How and why a Persian recipe was recorded in a Syrian cookbook that charts local, regional tastes could suggest that this dish was popular enough at the time of writing in the region that it felt right at home alongside other dishes (such as my chicken with blackberry sauce)
Today, I’ll be making a sweet dessert recorded by Apicius - the simple pear patina, which is kind of like a baked sponge in terms of texture. The original recipe requires some ingredients that are difficult to get a hold of today, so I’ve substituted some close modern approximations - which work just as well!
In any case, let’s now take a look at The World That Was! Follow along with my YouTube video, above!
Ingredients
5 pears
white wine (to cook the pears)
2 tbsp honey
pepper
cumin
½ cup sweet wine
4 eggs
1 tbsp olive oil
Method
1 - Poach pears
To begin with, we need to prepare our pears. Do this by pouring most of a bottle of wine into a pot large enough to accommodate your pears. You can also use water, if you’re not keen on using alcohol! Place this over a high heat, and bring it to a simmer.
When it’s simmering steadily, carefully place your pears into the liquid, before pouring a couple tablespoons of honey over this. Make sure the liquid covers the pears when they’re touching the bottom of the pot. Return to the heat, and let the pears poach partially for about 5 minutes, or until a knife, when inserted into the centre of one, comes out easily.
Drain your pears, and let them cool to room temperature, before you deal with them. Technically the leftover liquid doesn’t get used later on, but it’s perfectly drinkable as is! It’s a super sweet, mildly pear-tasting wine!
2 - Prepare Pear Mix
When your pears have cooled, divide each one into pairs of pears using a sharp knife. Then carefully cut the tough, fibre-filled core of the fruit. The skin of these should be practically falling off, but remove them anyway.
Place the softened fruit into a large bowl, and toss a tablespoon of ground cumin on top of this, along with a few twists of freshly ground black pepper! On top of this, add another squeeze of honey, and a little splash of olive oil. Also pour in a half a cup of a sweet wine into this - I used a bit of the poaching liquid, but passum (a raisin wine) is used in the original recipe, but any sweet wine is suitable. Mix all this with a mortar and pestle - or a fork, if you’re not from antiquity - until it’s just combined. When it’s mixed, crack four eggs into the bowl, and mix everything until there’s no more streaks of egg visible.
3 - Bake the Patina
When your mixture is done, go lightly oil a baking dish. It’s likely that a terracotta pot would have been used in antiquity, but an ovenproof baking dish works well today. Don’t over-oil the inside too much!
Gently pour in your pear mixture, and place the whole thing into the centre of an oven preheated to 180° C / 350° F for about 45 minutes, or until a skewer inserted into the centre of your patina comes out clean.
Let this cool to room temperature before digging in! Don’t worry if it deflates a little, this is to be expected and is completely fine!
The finished dish is very sweet, with only a very slight hint of pear. Although it seems a little plain, this pairs fantastically well with hard, salty cheeses, and sharp-tasting dishes (such as olives in vinegar) - as such, it’s unlikely that this was eaten alone as a dessert, more likely it was a companion dish that was intended to be a complimentary dish to others.
