The Observer
News 11.08.19 23Archaeologists made
the fi rst big stir, but
tucking into ancient
menus from porridge
to sourdough has
become a modern
cookbook craze,
reports James Tapper
During a 1954 BBC documentary
about Tollund Man , the mysterious
body of a hanged man discovered
in a peat bog in Denmark, the
archaeologist Sir Mortimer Wheeler
ate a reconstruction of the 2,000-year-
old’s last meal. After tasting porridge
of barley, linseed and mustard
seeds, he dabbed his moustache and
declared the mystery solved: Tollund
Man had killed himself rather than
eat another spoonful.
Food reconstruction has come a
long way since. Last week Seamus
Blackley , a scientist more famous for
creating the X box , baked a sourdough
with original techniques is a vital
archaeological tool. “To use your
hand, your eyes, nose, tastebuds, to
labour over something, to use a hand-
mill to make a loaf , so you understand
how much sweat went into making it- you start to understand how much
value it had.”
While some food reconstruction
focuses on matching ingredients
and some use historical techniques ,
others aim to replicate taste, says Dr
Chris Kissane , a food historian. “Our
sense of taste has changed consid-
erably , even in the last few hundred
years. People in the early modern
period used a lot of sugar to preserve
food, so they had a lot more tolerance
for sweetness in savoury food.”
Examining the evolution of taste
brings other questions. Heavily spiced
medieval food gave way to potatoes,
tomatoes, chilli and peppers from
the Americas, while the 18th-cen-
tury French cuisine revolution led to
restaurants. “It’s impossible to think
about food history without thinking
about everything else.”
Blackley’s samples are being ana-
lysed by Bowman, who is trying to
map the yeast genome to compare it
with modern strains. “ I’m reminded
of mummy wheat,” Fuller said. “In
the 19th century people claimed to
get wheat out of Egyptian tombs and
cultivate it. You can possibly still buy
some. But none are actually ancient.
Seeds do n ’t have that kind of viability.”
Customers
buying bread,
in a fresco from
Pompeii.
Alamyloaf using yeast cultured from scrap-
ings off 4,500-year-old Egyptian
pottery. The results, said one of his
collaborators, Dr Serena Love , an
Egyptologist , were “tangy and deli-
cious”. Blackley extracted samples
from a clay pot from the Peabody
Museum at Harvard University three
weeks ago. Most are being exam-
ined by Richard Bowman , a molecu-
lar biologist, but Blackley kept one to
make bread. “Food puts you in touch
with the humanity of the past,” Love
said. “That’s a tactile thing, something
visceral – you can actually experience
the ancients .”
They are not quite the first to
attempt to take yeast from ancient
sources. In May scientists in Israel
brewed beer using yeast from wine
and beer jugs found in archaeologi-
cal digs. Another scientist, Raul Cano
from California Polytechnic State
University , extracted yeast from a
bee trapped in amber 45m years ago,
and eventually set up the Fossil Fuel
Brewing Company to sell the results.
You can also add to the list Carlsberg’s
1883 , Dogfi sh Head’s Midas TouchDig in! Fancy a nice slice
of 4,500-year-old bread?
imental archaeologists such as Sally
Grainger who has made versions of
garum, a Roman fi sh sauce, as well as
Jill Hatch who cooks Roman food for
the Ermine Street Guard enthusiasts
and similar groups. But those look-
ing for original ingredients to recre-
ate tastes need to be cautious, says
Professor Dorian Fuller , an archaeo-
botanist from University College
London. “Yeast is everywhere. It’s
hard to know if something wasn’t
contaminated when it was dug out
of the ground. These things haven’t
been kept in sterile conditions.”
Because diets have been founded
on grains for millennia, beer, bread
and porridge are the main focus of
attempts to recreate ancient foods.
“The latest study said grain made up
about 70% of the daily diet of Romans ,”
said Farrell Monaco , an archaeolo-
gist who has worked in Pompeii and
Herculaneum. “Although I think that’s
a little high , bread and pulses were
the two vehicles to get calories into
the Roman diet.” Pompeii has baker-
ies on every corner, she said.
Monaco uses replicas of Roman
and Greek kitchen tools to make
dishes described by ancient writ-
ers such as Columella , Pliny and
Cato : fi g vinegar, moretum (salads),
hypotrimma (a sweet paste) and defru-
tum (a grape syrup) as well as panis
quadratus , a round loaf that has been
excavated at sites around Vesuvius.
She believes making ancient foodThe ancient
Egyptian pots,
above, from
which Seamus
Blackley’s team
took spores of
4,500-year-old
yeast, aboveright, which were
used to bake the
‘unbelievably
sweet and rich’
sourdough
loaf, right.
Photographs by
Seamus BlackleyPliny the Elder’s leaven or
starter dough, from Historia
Naturalis , published about
AD77-79Ingredients
2 cups of millet or whole wheat fl our
2 cups of grapes (rinsed)
2 cups of tepid water
CheeseclothStep 1 Rinse grapes and tie into acheesecloth pouch. Smash them
in a bowl. Drain, add water, mix in
fl our and cover the grapes with the
mixture. Cover the bowl, leave in a
warm place for 1-2 days.
Step 2 When the starter is
fermenting, bubbles appear. Remove
the grape pouch and dispose.
Start again if white or black mould
has formed. Transfer into a fresh
container, and add ½ cup fl our and ½
cup water. Leave for another day.Step 3 Check if a strong-smelling
liquid has formed. Stir it back in. Add
more fl our if the mixture seems wet.
Step 4 After 4-5 days, you should
see signifi cant growth and bubbles
forming. Th e leaven is ready.
Step 5 Store in fridge in an air-tight
container. Feed your leaven with fl our
after use.Adapted by Farrell Monaco :
tavolamediterranea.comRoman banquet
and Tutankhamun Ale , brewed by
Scottish and Newcastle in the 1990s
from yeast collected by academics
Barry Kemp and Delwen Samuel.
Ancient and historical foods are
having a bit of a moment. The interest
can be seen in cookbooks now avail-
able about Viking, Mughal and medi-
eval food, as well as in the number of
food re-enactments. Graham Taylor’s
Potted History fi rm makes ampho-
ras and Neolithic pottery for exper-ПОДГОТОВИЛАГРУППА"What's News"
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