The following is an example of a recipe, which even bears the name
of Apicius, that will give you a good sense of Roman elite taste.
It’s called minutal Apicianum, or Apician stew. It starts with a list
of ingredients that go into a pot: oleum, liquamen, vinum, porrum
capitatum, mentam, pisciculos, esiciola minuta, testiculos caponum,
glandulas porcellinas, which translates as “oil, garum, wine, leeks,
mint, small fi sh, capon’s testicles, suckling pig sweetbreads.”
The translated recipe continues: “Cook all this together. Pound
pepper, lovage, cilantro, or coriander seed, moisten with garum,
add a bit of honey, and some of its own broth, temper with wine
and honey. Heat it up, and break in tracta to thicken, stir it up and
sprinkle on pepper and serve.”
The tracta are a kind of ancestor of pasta, except the thin sheets
of dough are baked and then crumbled into the stew to thicken
it—enough so that it holds together. To analyze a recipe like this,
you have to consider what diners would have thought about it. In
modern times, we have explicit associations with certain foods,
and the Romans would have had similar associations. Some
may be comfort foods while others are reserved for holidays and
celebrations. Some foods we associate with romantic dinners and
others with specifi c places.
Many of us cringe when we think of eating rooster testicles, but if
we look at what Romans wrote about them, we fi nd that they did
not think testicles were strange at all. In fact, the physician Galen
says that rooster testicles are the best in every respect, especially
from grain-fed roosters.
The ingredients in this recipe were anything but weird. Suckling
pig sweetbreads may also sound odd, but it is actually very mild
and delicate. Likewise, the small fi sh were considered very elegant.
When sauced with herbs and spices, wine, honey, and fi sh sauce,
the dish actually becomes a very interesting mélange of fl avors and
textures, similar to something you might fi nd in a Chinese restaurant
today. Most importantly, it’s sophisticated and complex—and very