Transcript Roman Dinner Party Project Links

Edamus: Let’s Eat!
Roman Meals
Banquet Project: Latin I
Let’s Eat!
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Most Romans were poor.
“Bread and Circuses”
Annona---welfare tokens
Alimenta---similar to our WIC program for kids
Daily food in the city for the lower classes would
have had little variety: bread, vegetables, meat
on occasion
• Wealthy Romans enjoyed a wide range of food.
Your Meals
• ientaculum: breakfast (usually bread dipped
in oil or wine; wealthier people might add
fruit, cheese, etc.)
• prandium: lunch (a light meal, usually cold
leftovers)
• cena: dinner (largest meal of the day, might
start as early as 3 PM)
Where Did Food Come From?
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Markets: vegetables, fish, poultry, meat, fruits
Thermopolium: take-out shop
Pistrina: bakery
Only the wealthy had culinae (kitchens) in
their homes
Pistrina
Thermopolium
Common Foods
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Bread
Poultry/fish
Vegetables
Meat: for the poor, on rare ocassions such as
public sacrifices
What the Romans did NOT have…
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Rice
Pasta
Tomatoes
Potatoes
Sugar
Corn
Oranges
bananas
strawberries
raspberries
coffee
tea
hard liquor
butter
chocolate
• Instead of butter, they used olive oil
• Instead of pasta, they used thin pancakes
• Romans had many varieties of wine from all
over the Empire---wine was always mixed with
water (to make different strengths)
Fishy Business!
• Garum, aka liquamen
• “Fish sauce” or “fish pickle”
• Made from the heads, bones, and entrails of
fish which decomposed in a strong brine
Don’t think it’s around today?!
Vinegar, Molasses, High Fructose Corn Syrup,
Anchovies, Water, Onions, Salt, Garlic,
Tamarind Concentrate, Cloves, Natural
Flavorings, Chili Pepper Extract.
A Dinner Party
• Triclinium--- “tri”=“three”, literally 3 couches,
3 people per couch (the ideal number for a
dinner party)
• Guests reclined to eat, resting on the left
elbow
• Slaves would remove guests’ sandals and
wash their feet
Presentation!
• Wealthy parties would feature exotic foods
such as peacock and flamingo
• Often cooks would present food disguised as
something else (such as a pig that looked like
a chicken, or cakes made to look like boiled
eggs)
Utensils
• Spoons, plates, bowls, goblets
• No forks
• Slaves carved meat into small pieces before it
was sent to the table
• Most eating was done with the fingers
Courses
• Appetizer: gustatio
– eggs, shellfish, salad, mulsum---honeyed wine
• Main course: fercula
– several courses, odd number, the chief dish would be served in the
middle
• Pause for libation to the gods
• Dessert: secunda mensa (“second table”)
– fruits, sometimes pastries
• Sometimes slaves would replace the entire table top for
dessert…that’s why it was called “second table”
A Cooking Rant
My cook wants a mountain of peppercorns,
And then he’ll waste my best Falernian wine
To make his precious fish-pickle recipe…
And now that enormous boar he’s bought
Won’t even fit the stove: by the father of the gods,
I swear he’s trying to bankrupt me!
---Martial (1st c. AD)
Apicius: De Re Coquinara
“Concerning Cookery”
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Apicius lived during the 1st century AD
Was a well-known gourmet
His cookbook survives
Roman cooking relied heavily on sauces
Often combined sweet and spicy (hot) flavors
Some Sample Recipes
• Patellam Lucretiam: Wash onions. Throw out the
green parts and slice into a cooking vessel. Add a
little fish stock, oil and water. While cooking, place
raw saltfish in their midst. And when the fish are
almost cooked, sprinkle a spoonful of honey and just
a touch of vinegar and boiled wine. Taste. If the dish
is bland, add a little fish-pickle. If it is too salty, add a
little honey. Sprinkle with the leaves of the oxtongue
plant and simmer.
Copadia Haedina sive Agnina
Choice Cuts of Kid or Lamb
• Cook them with pepper and stock. Serve with
a sauce of sliced green beans, stock, pepper,
laser, fried cumin, pieces of bread, and a little
olive oil.
Dulcia Domestica
Homemade Sweets
• Take palms or dates, with the stones removed,
and stuff them with nuts or nut kernels and
ground pepper. Salt the dates on top and
bottom and fry in cooked honey and serve.
• ***Pepper can mean pepper, cinnamon, or
nutmeg. All were known to the Romans, who
lumped them into the same category.
Aliter Dulcia
“Other Sweets”
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Strip of pieces of the best African must cake and immerse them in milk. When
they have drunk [up all the milk they can, form them into small cakes]. Bake
them in the oven, but not for long lest they become too dry. [After baking]
remove [from the oven and] pour honey over the cakes while they are still hot.
Puncture them so that they may drink [up the honey]. Sprinkle with pepper
and serve.
Arise: even now boys are buying their morning
pastries
And the roosters of the dawn are everywhere
alive with calls.
---Martial
Just don’t become obsessed with
food…
Calliodorus, yesterday you sold a slave for 1,200
sesterces to dine well once.
But you didn’t eat well: the 4 pound mullet you bought
was the spectacle, the chief dish of your dinner.
I cried out to you: “This is not a fish, you b----, it’s not:
It’s a man, Calliodorus, you’ve been eating a man!”
---Martial
Roman Dinner Party Project!
• You must invite 8 guests (and yourself) for the nine diners.
The guests can be anyone, real or fiction, living or dead.
• Draw out your seating chart and show who will sit where,
including the guest of honor.
• Using web resources, plan your dinner with the gustatio,
fercula, and secunda mensa. Make a menu with the Latin and
English recipe names, and the actual recipes (ingredients) for
each.
• Plan your entertainment. The Romans enjoyed poetry,
dancers, music, acrobats, and so forth.
What you’ll turn in:
• On unlined paper:
– Your seating chart/guests’ names (point out who
is the guest of honor)
– Your decorated menu. Include the entertainment
at the bottom.
• gustatio (appetizers), fercula (main course), secunda
mensa (dessert)
– Work should be historically accurate, neatly done
(preferably typed or printed), and show off all
your research!