Photo credit: (c) Dorina MATIS / AGERPRES

Experts say the collection of Roman recipes attributed to gourmet Marcus Gavius Apicius was probably compiled under Emperor Tiberius in the 1st century AD.

‘There is only one cook book from ancient Rome; it’s called ‘De re coquinaria’, meaning ‘about food’ or ‘about cooking.’ I received it from my colleagues of the Mures County Museum, who organize the Roman Festival of Calugareni [central Romania], which has its third edition this year. (…) It’s not a recipe collection like those we’re familiar with nowadays; it’s rather a hodgepodge of Apicius’s ingredients. He was a big gourmet; he was ambitious; he had the money to prepare these dishes and he cooked for many of his friends. He had the ambition of knowing and cooking and creating food, and he wanted to prove cooking was something extraordinary, not a common thing like people considered it back then. In those times, cooking was considered easy and ordinary; I mean Romans thought anyone could do it. Apicius, however, tried to turn gastronomy into an art. The book itself does not include proper recipes, and the recipes we have used to cook at the Roman Festival were written and described using presentations of Apicius by the Hungarian translators of this work,’ Botond Gaspar told AGERPRES.

The journalist cook found there several recipes, like pork ham fried with acacia honey; Apicius-style meat roll; minced sausages; seared lamb; boiled veal; Matius-style mincemeat; broiled veal; broiled wild boar; game sauce; sausages; Vitellus-style piglet; pig liver; stuffed chicken; Cattabia Apiciana salad; Frontinus-style chicken. Unusual recipes were also find, using ostrich meat, tuna filet, quail, river clams, fried fish, fish soup, crayfish, octopus, boiled zander sauce, broiled mushrooms, asparagus, Vitellus-style peas, offal soup with apricots, pear soufflé, sweet omelette with milk, custard, dates with honey and jam.

In spite of these many specialties, the recipes used at the Roman Festival were intended to be more contemporary, so an attempt at ‘quick soup’ was made, although it used to be considered a poor people’s dish.

‘For instance, the ‘quick soup’ I prepared at the 2013 and 2014 editions, although not considered a proper dish in the Roman Empire because it was reserved to poor people, had a great success among the attending tourists. For the Roman quick soup, we need the following ingredients: chicken breast, carrots, parsley, onions, pepper, celery salt, crushed bay leaves, and eggs. The chicken breast is boiled with the vegetables and pepper, and when the meat is done, we take it out, debone it and cut it into small pieces. Bay leaves, oil and salt are added to the stock; the vegetables are pureed (now we can use a blender) and mixed in, and everything is boiled again. When the soup is ready, we add a yolk in the plate and pour the soup over it,’ the journalist-cook explained.

He said troops used to eat lentils or beans, chestnuts and various spices, a little meat if available — and obviously they drank wine.

The 3rd edition of the Roman Festival of Calugareni will be held in August. The journalist intends to prepare a new recipe of Apicius, ‘Baea-style bean salad,’ feasible at home. ‘We need a pound of green beans, celery, one leek, half a cup of white wine, 2-3 tablespoons of oil, lemon juice, garum [Roman fermented fish sauce used as a condiment] or sardine paste (we now have salt and we can use it), and a teaspoonful of cumin. Green beans are cut in inch-long pieces and simmered until soft. When they are done we let it cool and we pour on a dressing made of vinegar, lemon juice, oil, white wine and salt, with small pieces of leek and celery. We pour it on the beans. The salad can be eaten cold or warm,’ he detailed.

He added that modern gastronomy was unknown to Romans, and food was usually prepared on an open fire outdoors, on a plate or grill, or in a cauldron.

‘Basic food consisted of ?puls’ or ?polenta’ as they called it [porridge] and ?pulmentum’ [a kind of vegetable mush]. Meat was eaten only at meetings, the so-called epulum sau convivium, where they served fowl, pork, and river and sea fish. Bread was leavened with sourdough and eventually it replaced polenta. Commoners used to eat unleavened bread made with husks, or cheap cake. The most widespread cereals were wheat, rye, millet, barley and oats; the most common vegetables — cabbage, carrots, lettuce, beet, onions, cucumbers, pumpkins, asparagus. Potatoes and maize were still unknown, and rice was a very expensive and rare delicacy. The most common fruits were walnuts, peaches, grapes and chestnuts. Antique Roman cuisine is not the same as present day Italian gastronomy, as there were no dishes made with tomatoes or pasta, which are nowadays the main ingredients,’ Gaspar Botond says.

He confessed he highly appreciates Apicius’s work, as the Roman can be considered one of the forefathers of world gastronomy. AGERPRES