Acadian Food American Food Australian Food British Food Byzantine Food Canadian Food Chinese Food Egypt (Ancient) French Food German Food Greece (Ancient) Greek Food Irish Food Irish Food (Northern) Italian Food Japanese Food Jewish Food Medieval Food Mexican Food Norwegian Food Québecois Food Raw Foods Roman Food Scottish Food Sicilian Food Slow Food Spanish Food Tex-Mex Food Turkish Food Tuscan Food Previous | Next | Roman Food© Copyright 2009. All rights reserved and enforced Roman food mosaic. Vatican. 2005. Rome was founded, historians believe, by 625 BC (though the Romans themselves believed their city was founded in 735 BC.) The last Emperor (Romulus Augustus) was tossed out in 476 AD. If we think that the past 100 years have changed the food we eat, imagine how much Roman food -- not to mention tastes and fashions -- would have changed over 850 years. The Romans assigned a lot of symbolism to their food, but it was far more class symbolism than religious. They were very much like us today in this, except that some of the symbols are now reversed: now, people consider it better to eat brown bread, and brown bread is more expensive than white. To a Roman, if you ate brown bread, you were a peasant. They were snobs not only about what you ate and how you ate it: whom you ate it with told them as well not only whether you were Roman or not, but what your place was in society. The upper class, for instance, would never eat out in public, commercial places that sold food. The taverns that sold food were called "Popinae", where people sat on stools around tables to eat. Only the lower classes went to them. Roman dining varied widely depending on how much money you had. Our movies and popular culture have focussed on what the extremely wealthy have eaten, but they were a minute percentage of the population. It would be like someone a thousand years from now thinking we all dined at the White House or Buckingham Palace. Romans had many minor influences on their food -- as food came in from various parts of the expanding empire -- and perhaps two major influences. Their own Roman agricultural roots, which continued to be seen as a noble ideal throughout the history of the Empire, and the Greek influence. The wealthier Romans had Greek slaves, who would cook for them. R.W. Davies in "The Roman Military Diet," in 1971 writes that there is archaeological evidence that Roman soldiers in the northern provinces would eat more meat than people back in Italy, and even acquired a taste for beer. And certainly as more Gauls and Germans became Roman soldiers, they would have brought their preferences into the army and back to Rome. Much of Roman food was based on combining sweet, sour and savoury tastes all in one dish, just as Chinese food still does today. The taste for seasoning dishes in this way not only survived the fall of Rome, it remained the practice through the Dark Ages, the Middle Ages and right up until it was finally overthrown by the revolution in French cooking that was to occur in the 1600s. Much food that food writers think was introduced to Europe during the Arab occupation of Spain had actually already been in Europe up to a 1,000 years before that, with the Romans. Some of these foods disappeared entirely from Europe under the wave of barbarians, with cultivation practices lost or trade routes cut off; others, such as melons and citrus fruit, may have survived in small, backwater areas of Italy, though there is often no solid evidence one way or another other than local belief. Roman Cookbooks Pompeii Apicius‡ ‡ actually wrote two cookbooks: a first one on sauces, and then a second one which built on the first, called "de re Coquinaria" ("about things concerning cooking".) The earliest surviving manuscript of that book dates from the 9th century; it is almost complete. A man named Joseph Dommers Vehling did the first English translation of it in 1926. Though scholars trash Vehling's translation, it is still the one most people turn to. The cookbook was clearly meant for a rich upper-class audience -- which is understandable, because they are the ones who would have been able to read. It calls on expensive ingredients and has a great number of meat recipes, which would have been food that the likes of us could only have dreamed of. The division of the cookbook isn't so different from how cookbooks are divided today:
To understand ingredients, we can also turn to a book written by Pliny the Elder (23-79 AD), called "Natural History" ("Historia naturalis"), and to books on farming such as "On Farming" (De Re Rustica) written by Marcus Porcius Cato (234 BC to 149 BC.) ‡Though some argue that the Deipnosophistae by Atheneaus, written around 228 AD, should be called the first cookery book. ‡‡There are three people named Apicius that we know of. One was a famous gourmet who lived at the time of Tiberius. Many people assume that he was the one who wrote the cookbook. However, the cookbook was actually written in the late 4th or early 5th century, in a Latin that was already evolving away from itself. The author of this book is said by many sources to be a man named Caelius Apicius. Apicius is a family name meaning "bee-keeper." Roman MealsRegular Romans ate very simply, not like the obscenely wealthy ones portrayed in movies. Meal patterns changed during the long history of the empire.
The breakfast meal was called "Ientaculum", though Romans weren't big on breakfast, and it wasn't a family meal. If you did eat something in the morning, it was some sort of bread, some wine, and cheese and/or fruit, and you likely ate it on the run. Prandium This name didn't become used until later in Roman times. For the wealthy, it would be a light, cold lunch. For ordinary people, it would often still be their main meal, and often be a one-pot dish as well. Cena In early Roman times, the "cena", the main meal of the day, was at midday for everybody. Later, the Prandium at midday evolved, and cena shifted to the evening amongst the wealthy classes. The verb was "cenare", which Romans speculated originally meant "to share", but which they used to mean "to dine." Italians still use these two words, "cena" and "cenare", today to mean "dinner" and "to dine." The dining room in a wealthy home was called either the "cenatio" or the "triclinium", just depending on when and where the family lived (just as today some people say livingroom, others say frontroom or parlour.) In wealthy homes, the cena would be a 3 part meal:
Only adults would recline on couches; children would sit on stools. The cena was the only meal that would be eaten reclining. Meat was not often served. It would be reserved for special occasions, except amongst the few hosts who were very rich and who practised conspicuous consumption (and were often mocked for this by Roman writers.) Vesperna This was the name for the evening meal for everybody in the early history of Rome, and remained the evening meal for ordinary people till the end of Rome. There wouldn't have been meat, the food would have been very plain and probably a one-dish meal, and certainly there wouldn't have been couches for guests to recline on and servants pouring wine. Occasionally an ordinary family would serve meat for the evening meal, perhaps to celebrate birthdays, holidays or special events, and if meat was served, they would be more likely to refer to the meal as a "cena." DairyThe Romans made butter only very occasionally, but generally didn't eat it. When they did use butter, it was to put on a wound, as we do today on a burn (which is not the right thing to do, by the way.) The Romans ate cheese. Most of their cheeses were fresh cheeses, though in other parts of the Empire, such as Helvetica (what we now call Switzerland), some hard cheeses were made up in the mountains. In 2002, a Dr. Luigi Capasso (State University G. d'Annunzio in Chieti, Italy) analysed a piece of cheese that had been carbonized in Pompeii. He found that it was made of goat's milk, and that it carried brucellosis, which was a disease of the joints very common in Roman times. His feeling is that it shows that goat's milk cheese was a major source of the disease in the Roman Empire. Meat Colosseum aka Amphitheatrum Flavium That being said, meat was eaten only sparingly, because it was seen as decadent and / or barbaric. While normal Roman meals were often meatless, though, people would have been insulted if a banquet did not include meat. Meat would make appearances mostly at special occasions such as these. The Romans considered the Germanic tribes barbarians because they relied so heavily in their diets on meat and animal products. When an animal was killed to be eaten, it would be done first as a sacrifice, to the household gods or to public gods, as a way of showing respect for the life that was being taken. It would have been seen as beyond the pale to just butcher an animal for food without dedicating it to a god first. At home, the sacrifice would be to household gods. Butcher shops would sell meat that had been sacrificed in the public temples. Christianity came to see sacrifice as cruel, even though Christians still slaughtered animals anyway. How to live with other people's practices such as this was a dilemma for the early Christians, until Christianity decided the best way was to deal with this to simply ban all practices except its own. With Christianity and Northern European influences, where meat was the main item in the diet, meat would become "deconsecrated", paving the way for it to become the normal food item that it has become today. From the 200s on, not only bread but also pork was distributed to the people in times when they needed quietening. The early Romans didn't eat fish very often. Later on fresh fish were a delicacy, as were oysters. Some writers looked on fish as a decadent luxury. The verb "to dine" ("cenare") originally meant "to share" (Romans believed this was the history of the word, at any rate), as in to share the meat from a sacrifice in a communal fashion. GrainsThe Romans saw grain as an essential. They preferred vegetables to grain, but grain was something that could be stored against famine. Having grain meant that people weren't reduced to combing the woods for acorns and chestnuts, something that would have been seen as barbaric and beneath the dignity of a Roman citizen, however lowly or poor. In giving its citizens free grain during time of war or famine, the government was protecting its citizens dignity. The free grain allowance was called the "annona." There was no profit in growing grain in Rome. It was seen as a citizen's basic right, so it had to be sold at a cost dictated by the state, or even at times distributed free. The "breadbaskets" of the Roman world were Egypt, Libya, Algeria, Southern France and Sicily. Egypt produced both the most grain by far, and the grain most prized. Egypt continued to be the breadbasket of the ancient world until it was overrun by Arabs, and its millennia old wheat and grape crops perished. The Romans liked high gluten wheat because of the chewy, stable loaves it made. Barley flour bread was for slaves or soldiers being punished. Barley, millets and oats were considered only fit for the poor. Rye was grown only in the northern part of the Roman Empire, as it was a grain that tolerated the cold. In the early stages of the Roman Empire, most grain was consumed in the form of Puls: grains cooked in water. Puls(Pulmentum)Puls, a boiled wheat porridge, was an important part of the diet in early Rome, before they adopted the habit of using bread as a staple in their diet. Meat or veg could be added to make a stew. Pulmentum could also be made thicker, making it an early precursor to the dish we now know as Polenta. Cato the Elder (234 BC - 149 BC) was annoyed with the switch in preference from puls to bread; he thought bread was decadent. FloursBy the 1st century, the preference was definitely for white bread made from white flour. Pure wheat flour was called "siligo." Second rate breads would be made of wheat with the bran still in them, or of just the bran. In the cheapest breads, dried ground beans, chick peas, green peas and lentils would be mixed in with the flour. In Caesar's time, a man named Vitruvio, who also wrote "De Architectura", invented the use of water wheels to power flour-grinding mills. They began to be more widely used in the first century AD. BakeriesA bakers' guild was formed around 168 BC. Called the Collegium Pistorum, it was an important, respected guild. Bakers could become wealthy. By Augustus' time (31 BC - 14 AD), there were over 250 bakeries in Rome. Modern estimates put their output at 500,000 loaves a day. A bakery was called a "pistrinum." Many bakeries ground the grain as well, thus the alternative word "Pistorum", meaning "grinders." The mills for grinding would be turned by asses or horses. Bakeries had large bowls made of volcanic stone for dough kneading, with the blades turned by animals or slaves. The oven doors would be made of iron. Bakeries would keep on hand baking pans made of bronze for making cakes with. Bakeries even made dog biscuits. Most Romans in Rome lived in apartments without kitchens, let alone ovens, so they couldn't bake their own bread. They would buy bread from the bakeries. Whenever they were given free grain by the state, they would often take most of it to a bakery to grind it for them into flour and make bread from it for them. They still had to pay the bakers for the milling and bread-making, so rather than receiving free grain, it perhaps more accurate to say they got cheap bread (as only the grain part was free.) Wealthier homes could bake their own bread in their own ovens, but even they still seemed to send their grain out to millers for grinding. Bread Bread oven at Pompeii Bread was, of course, made in different ways depending on which part of the Empire it was made in. In the province of Egypt, bread was made with "barm" (live yeast from beer brewing), as was bread in northern Gaul and other provinces. But on the peninsula of Italy itself, beer was viewed as a barbarian's drink, and wine was made instead. Wine yeast, though, isn't good for making bread from. Consequently, the Romans in Italy made their bread instead with "starter", a bit of dough left over from previous batches, as in done with sourdough bread today. Soldiers were given bread each day, and not allowed to sell or trade it. Warriors were considered heavy-bread eaters, not heavy meat-eaters, as they are now. Our current association of a warrior being a hearty meat-eater is owing to later Germanic influence. The art of making finer breads was lost for centuries after Rome fell. Some Roman bread types:
Fish SaucesWe know that some of the most famous fish sauces were made from certain fish: "garum" from mackerel, and "muria" from tuna. Other fish sauces, though, could be made from any mixture of fish. In Judaea, there was even a kosher fish sauce -- which implies that no shellfish were used, which in turn implies that sometimes shellfish might have been included in Roman fish sauces. Roman Foodies considered the fish sauce made from mackerel -- "garum" -- to be the best. WaterIt's a myth that Romans weren't aware of lead poisoning. They were, and were very conscious of it. They used lead a lot in the early days, but over time noticed the effects on those who worked with it or who wore it in cosmetics. Consequently, they avoided the use of lead in pipes for water. Rome had a very safe, reliable water supply. The Romans brought in water to the cities from long distances via tunnels through rock, channels on top of aqueducts, and through ceramic pipes. They preferred hard water, not only for its tastes, but because the calcium in it, which we dislike because of how it coats things, would make any leaks starting to emerge in the pipes self-sealing. See the main entry on Water for more details on Romans and water.
Special Food DaysSome Typical Foods Items / IngredientsSome Roman RecipesOther entries for: Cuisine PagesAcadian Food, American Food, Australian Food, British Food, Byzantine Food, Canadian Food, Chinese Food, Egypt (Ancient), French Food, German Food, Greece (Ancient), Greek Food, Irish Food, Irish (Northern), Italian Food, Japanese Food, Jewish Food, Medieval Food, Mexican Food, Norwegian Food, Roman Food, Scottish Food, Slow Food, Spanish Food, Tex-Mex Food, Turkish Food, Tuscan Food |
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