Looking to throw the ultimate theme party? Just dying to wrap up in a sheet toga-style and enjoy some honey-dipped dormice in the manner of the ancient Romans? We’re always up for a dining adventure here at EternallyCool and lately we’ve been entertaining ourselves by reading ancient Roman menus, for they offer culinary inspiration as well as the chance to shudder a bit when such delicacies as stuffed sow’s womb or peacock eyeballs are mentioned.
For example, we’ve just been perusing the Satyricon, a novel written in the second century AD which recounts an elaborate (and fictional) feast offered by a pretentious and wealthy Roman named Trimalchio. What was served up at this exaggerated extravaganza? The guests started the meal with wine, olives, dormice sprinkled with poppy-seed and honey, hot sausages, plums, and pomegrantate seeds.
From there they moved on to pea-hen eggs stuffed with fig-peckers surrounded by peppered egg yolks, a one-hundred year-old Falernian wine, a tray of nibbles featuring the signs of the zodiac and foods associated with each sign (ram’s vetches on Aries, a piece of beef on Taurus, the womb of an unfarrowed sow on Virgo, and so on), stuffed capons and sow’s bellies, and more.
Frankly, we’re glad to have missed that one, as Trimalchio was a difficult and demanding host. But we wish we’d been invited to the feast thrown for Macius Lentulus Niger, when, in 63 BC, he was made a Roman priest. His celebratory meal was attended by A-list religious officials, including Julius Caesar and the Vestal Virgins. And, while Roman banquets went on for hours and hours, one can imagine that everyone went home from this one quite sated, for the ancient writer Macrobius details the offerings:
Before the dinner proper came sea hedgehogs; fresh oysters, as many as the guests wished; large mussels; sphondyli; field fares with asparagus; fattened fowls; oyster and mussel pasties; black and white sea acorns; sphondyli again; glycimarides; sea nettles; becaficoes; roe ribs; boar’s ribs; fowls dressed with flour; becaficoes; purple shellfish of two sorts. The dinner itself consisted of sows’ udder; boar’s head; fish-pasties; boar-pasties; ducks; boiled teals; hares; roasted fowls; starch pastry; Pontic pastry.
If all this is making you hungry and you’re wanting to indulge in some good ancient Roman food, we recommend the following resources:
- Ancient Roman Recipes including a list of native Roman ingredients and measurement conversions
- Eight Roman Recipes from Patrick Faas’s fabulous book, Around the Roman Table. Food and Feasting in Ancient Rome.
- Information about garum, a fish sauce that was by far the most popular condiment in the Roman world. Don’t even try to stage a Roman banquet if you don’t have any garum.
Not looking to make your own Roman feast, but dying to delve into some of that irresistible ancient cuisine? You may want to pay a visit to Ars Convivialis, a restaurant in Rome that serves ancient Roman cuisine (they also cater), stages toga parties for groups, and offers a variety of ancient entertainment to accompany their feasts.
Or, if you’re really wanting to get a taste of antiquity, volunteer to be party of the Pompeii Food and Drink Project next summer. You’ll join a team of scholars as they analyze patterns of daily life in Pompeii by investigating structures and rooms used for the storage, distribution, preparation, serving, and consumption of food and drink
