Roman History Books and More

must cake, via cato the elder, junilla tacita, and apicius

In our current read, Venus in Copper, Falco, Helena Justina, and the Senator enjoy the must cake Falco bought from a street vendor.

Must cake is known to us via Cato the Elder's On Agriculture, specifically #121:

Recipe for must cake: Moisten 1 modius of wheat flour with must; add anise, cummin, 2 pounds of lard, 1 pound of cheese, and the bark of a laurel twig.  When you have made them into cakes, put bay leaves under them, and bake.

turbot

Juvenal's Satire IV describes the presentation of a turbot to Domitian, who calls a meeting of his council to discuss what to do with it. At a less exalted level, Marcus  Didius Falco had a similar problem when presented with a turbot by Titus, Domitian's elder brother, in Venus in Copper, one of our December reads.

Wikipedia (usual caveats apply) has a short article on turbot, with a not very helpful illustration. A rather better illustration, giving some idea of the size can be seen at the bottom of this angling page. 25lbs 12 oz works out at 11.68 kg.

So, should you be fortunate or unfortunate enough to be presented with a turbot, what do you do with it? The BBC gives us 17 recipes for turbot.

a dormouse record

In Gibbon's chapter XXXI, I was surprised to read this sentence and the accompanying footnote:

At the Roman tables the birds, the squirrels, (45) or the fish, which appear of an uncommon size are contemplated with curious attention; a pair of scales is accurately applied to ascertain their real weight and, while the more rational guests are disgusted by the vain and tedious repetition, notaries are summoned to attest by an authentic record the truth of such a marvellous event.

wine in the roman world, continued

Back in April, I blogged  Wine on the Roman World. 

Now,  Ancient Classical History points us to an article  in About.com's  Senior Travel:

Ancient Roman Wines in France - - A Fountain of Youth in a Bottle?

Not far from Nimes, ancient Latin recipes are turned to surprising wines

The ancient Romans believed Mulsum, a deep red wine with notes of cinnamon, pepper and thyme, increased potency and maintained youth, put hair on the chest, so to speak.  I hope not because I rather liked it when I tasted it recently in the South of France and hairy chests are not much of a look for a woman…

mulsum  ī, n  honey-wine, mead, wine mixed with honey:  (venenum) cum daretur in mulso: frigidum.   (Lewis & Short)

“Schlangenfadenglas” (serpent threads)  decanter from Cologne, Germany

wine in the roman world – and a poem by catullus

"Now nearly extinct in the wild, grapes (vitis vinifera) grew throughout the ancient Mediterranean. In Italy, grape vines were cultivated both in the north by the Etruscans and in the south by Greek colonists. Wine growing was less important to the Romans, who, in the early years of the Republic, were fighting to expand their domination of the peninsula. By the middle of the second century BC, however, with the defeat of the Etruscans and the Samnites, Pyrrhus and the Greeks, Philip of Macedonia and the Carthaginians, Rome controlled the Mediterranean, and there was the wealth and markets to invest in vineyards." So says the Encyclopaedia Romana: Wine.

A nice informative site is Roman Wine: A Window on Ancient Economy. This comes from the University of Pennsylvania, which has another site on wine also.

M. Gavius Apicius, gourmet and food writer

Where did historic fiction writers find those strange Roman recipes?  Mostly from Apicius!

M. Gavius Apicius was a 1^st century A.D. gourmet who, among other things, cooked at his own banquets. He is supposed to have written two books:  De condituriis is all about sauces.  The second one appears to have acquired additional recipes over the ages during which it was copied, and became what we now know as de re coquinaria, in 10 books.

Amended December 14, 2006:  It seems that the above Apicius  is actually not the author of the book which, from the language style has been compiled in the late 4th or early 5th centuryAD.  No one really seems to know who the author or authors were.