User:Cynwolfe/food and drink in the Roman Empire

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Food and drink

Main articles: Ancient Roman cuisine, Grain supply to the city of Rome, and Ancient Rome and wine

Food vendors are depicted in art throughout the Empire. In Rome, the Forum Holitorium was an ancient farmers' market, and the Vicus Tuscus was famous for its fresh produce. Throughout the city, meats, fish, cheeses, produce, olive oil, spices, and the ubiquitous condiment garum (fish sauce) were sold at macella, the Roman equivalent of shopping malls.

A Pompeiian taberna for eating and drinking; the faded fresco over the counter pictured eggs, olives, fruit and radishes

Most apartments in Rome lacked kitchens. A charcoal brazier could be used for rudimentary cookery, but ventilation was poor and braziers were fire hazards. Prepared food was sold at pubs and bars, inns, and food stalls (tabernae, cauponae, popinae). Some establishments had countertops fitted with openings for pots that may have kept food warm over a heat source (thermopolium), or simply served as storage vessels (dolia). Carryout and restaurant dining were for the lower classes; gourmet experiences were to be had only at private dinner parties in well-to-do houses staffed with a chef (archimagirus), a sous chef (vicarius supra cocos), and kitchen assistants (coci). Frequenting tabernae, where prostitutes sometimes worked, was among the moral failings that louche emperors and other public figures might be accused of.

Most people would have consumed at least 70 percent of their daily calories in the form of cereals and legumes. Grains included several varieties of wheat—emmer, rivet wheat, einkorn, spelt, and common wheat (Triticum aestivum)—as well as the less desirable barley, millet, and oats. Legumes included the lentil, chickpea, bitter vetch, broad bean, garden pea, and grass pea; Pliny names varieties such as the Venus pea. Legumes were planted in rotation with cereals to enrich the soil, and were stockpiled in case of famine. Although usually thought of as modest fare, legumes also appear among the dishes at banquets.

Puls (pottage) was considered the aboriginal food of the Romans, and played a role in some archaic religious rituals that continued to be observed during the Empire. The basic grain pottage could be elaborated with chopped vegetables, bits of meat, cheese, or herbs to produce dishes similar to risotto. "Julian stew" (Pultes Iulianae) was made from spelt to which was added two kinds of ground meat, pepper, lovage, fennel, and a wine reduction; according to tradition, it was eaten by the soldiers of Julius Caesar and was a "quintessential Roman dish." The poem Moretum describes a "ploughman's lunch", a flatbread prepared on a griddle and topped with cheese and a pesto-like preparation, somewhat similar to pizza or focaccia.

Mill and bakery complex at Pompeii

Urban populations and the military preferred to consume their grain in the form of bread. The lower classes ate coarse brown bread made from emmer or barley. Fine white loaves were leavened by wild yeasts and sourdough cultures. The beer-drinking Celts of Spain and Gaul were known for the quality of their breads risen with brewers' yeast.

Romans who received the grain dole took it to a mill to have it ground into flour. Maintaining a bread oven is labor-intensive and requires space, so apartment dwellers probably prepared their dough at home, then had it baked in a communal oven. Mills and commercial ovens, usually combined in a bakery complex, were considered so vital to the wellbeing of Rome that several religious festivals honored the deities who furthered these processes and even the donkeys who toiled in the mills. By the reign of Aurelian, the state had begun to distribute the annona as a daily ration of bread baked in state factories, and added olive oil, wine, and pork were to the dole.

Leafy vegetables such as lettuce and cabbage were eaten as salads with vinegar dressings. Cooked vegetables such as beets, leeks, and gourds were prepared with sauces as first courses or served with bread as a simple meal. Cured olives were available in wide variety even to those on a limited budget. Regional dried fruits such as Carian figs and Theban dates were exported from their provinces. Fruit trees were transplanted from abroad and disseminated among the provinces: the peach (persica) was the "Persian" fruit; xxxxx.

Roman butchers sold fresh pork, beef, and mutton or lamb. No portion of the animal was allowed to go to waste, resulting in blood puddings, meatballs (isicia), sausages, and stews. Gourmets indulged in wild game, fowl such as peacock and flamingo, large fish (mullet was especially prized), and seafood including sea urchin and scallops. Oysters were farmed at Baiae, a resort town on the Campanian coast, known for a regional shellfish stew made from oysters, mussels, sea urchins, celery and coriander.

The lack of refrigeration encouraged techniques of preservation for meat, fish, and dairy. Rural people cured ham and bacon, and regional specialties such as the salted hams of Gaul were items of trade. The regional sausages of Lucania were made from a mixture of ground meats, herbs, and nuts, with eggs as a binding ingredient, and then aged in a smoker.

Fresh milk was used in medicinal and cosmetic preparations, or for cooking. The milk of goats or sheep was thought superior to that of cows, and goat cheese was preferred. Cheese was easier to hold and transport to market, and literary sources describe cheesemaking in detail, including fresh and soft cheeses, regional specialties, and smoked cheeses. Butter was little used by the Romans, but was a distinguishing feature of Gallic dietary customs.

CAH [1]

law and rural economy[2]

Olive oil was fundamental not only to cooking, but to the Roman way of life, as it was also used in lamps and preparations for grooming. The olive orchards of Roman Africa attracted major investment and were highly productive, with trees larger than those of Mediterranean Europe; massive lever presses were developed for efficient extraction. Spain was also a major exporter of olive oil, but the Romans regarded oil from central Italy as the finest. the Romans invented the trapetum for extracting olive oil. Specialty blends were created from Spanish olive oil; Liburnian Oil (Oleum Liburnicum) was flavored with elecampane, cyperus root, bay laurel and salt. Lard, however, was used for baking pastries and seasoning some dishes.

Honey (mel) and wine-must syrup (defrutum) were the only sweeteners. Cane sugar was an exotic ingredient used only as a garnish or in medicines. Pure salt was relatively expensive. XXXXXXXXXXXX. The most common condiment was garum, the salty fermented fish sauce that also added the flavor dimension now called "umami". Major exporters of garum were located in the provinces of Spain. GRADES. Locally available seasonings included garden herbs, cumin, coriander, and juniper berries. Small pots (piperatoria), sometimes whimsical in shape, were created to hold pepper. Piper longum was imported from India, as was spikenard, used to season game birds and sea urchins. Other imported spices included saffron, cinnamon, and the silphium of Cyrene, a type of pungent fennel that was so sought after it became extinct in the reign of Nero and had to be replaced with laserpicium, asafoetida, imported from present-day Afghanistan. Pliny estimated that Romans spent 100 million sesterces a year on spices and perfumes from India, China, and the Arabian peninsula.

Still life on a 2nd-century mosaic

Roman literature focuses on the dining habits of the upper classes, and the most famous description of a Roman meal is probably Trimalchio's dinner party in the Satyricon, a fictional extravaganza that bears little resemblance to everyday reality even among the most wealthy. A multicourse dinner began with the gustatio ("tasting" or "appetizer"), often a salad or other minimally cooked composed dish, with ingredients to promote good digestion, //usually dishes of vegetables, roots, fish or eggs. The cena ("dinner, meal") proper, with the meat evoking sacrifice; A meal concluded with fruits and nuts, hence the phrase "from the egg to the xxxx" to refer to a multicourse menu, or with a deliberately superfluous dessert (secundae mensae). Martial describes a more plausible multicourse meal. The mallow leaves, lettuce, chopped leeks, mint, arugula, mackerel garnished with rue, sliced eggs, and marinated sow's udder. The main course was succulent cuts of kid, beans, greens, a chicken, and leftover ham. dessert was fresh fruit and vintage wine from Nonentan (no dregs)

Recipes are included in books on agriculture. A collection of recipes attributed to Apicius, a name that became synonymous with "gourmet," includes roast peacock. "the recipes are written haphazardly, as if someone familiar with the workings of a kitchen was jotting down notes for a colleague" Apicius uses eight different verbs for techniques for incorporating eggs into a dish, including one that might produce a soufflé. Recipes include regional specialties such as Ofellas Ostiensis was an hors d'oeuvre made from "choice squares of marinated pork cooked in a spicy sauce of typically Roman flavors: lovage, fennel, cumin, and anise." The signature dish Patina Apiciana required a complex forcemeat layered with egg and crepes, to be presented on a silver platter.

Parthian Chicken Spatchcock a chicken. Crush pepper, lovage, and a dash of caraway; blend in fish sauce to create a slurry, then thin with wine. Pour over chicken in a Cuman casserole. Dissolve asafoetida in warm water and baste chicken as it cooks. Season with pepper to serve.

Apicius, De Re Coquinaria 6.9.2

The importance of a good diet to health was recognized by medical writers such as Galen (2nd century AD), whose treatises included On Barley Soup. Views on nutrition were influenced by schools of thought such as humoral theory. Digestion of food within the body was thought to be a process analogous to cooking. Galen lists an astonishing variety of meats a person might eat, including not only the familiar domestic animals, but camels, panthers, and in the autumn "fox … fattened by grapes."

In upper-class households, the evening meal (cena) had various social functions. A well-to-do house (domus) had a well-decorated dining room (triclinium), often with a view of the peristyle garden, where guests could be entertained. Women dined with men, and a prohibition on wine-drinking by women in early Rome seems not to have been observed from the late Republic onward. On at least some occasions, children were included. Diners lounged on couches, leaning on the left elbow. Multicourse meals were served by the household slaves, who become prominent in the art of late antiquity as images of hospitality and luxury. The ideal number of guests for a dinner party (convivium, "life-sharing" or "a living together") was nine. This leisurely meal could be the setting for learned or amusing xxxxxx, with a greater emphasis on food than the Greek symposium (a "drinking together").

Animal sacrifices ended with a banquet, and feasting was central to religious life; funerals Petronius describes a funeral feast consisting of chickpeas, sausages, beets, whole wheat bread, cheese tart, honey, lupines, nuts, and an apple for each person.

Roman "foodies," however, did enjoy elaborate dishes composed of exotic and varied ingredients: tetrapharmacum was a dish of sows' udders, pheasant, peacock, ham, and wild boar. The Augustan historian Livy explicitly links the development of gourmet cuisine to Roman imperialism, dating the introduction of the first chefs to 187 BC, following the Galatian War. The favorite dish of the emperor Vitellius was the Shield of Minerva, composed of pike liver, brains of pheasant and peacock, flamingo tongue, and lamprey milt; the description given by Suetonius emphasizes that these imported luxuries were brought by the fleet from the far reaches of the Empire, Parthia to the Straits of Gibraltar. Gluttony and the pursuit of extreme gastronomy reflected the dangers of Rome succumbing to decadence through its imperialist access to delicacies xxxxxx.

Refined cuisine could be seen as a sign of either civilized progress or decadent decline.

Moralizing on food. Because of the importance of landowning in Roman culture, produce—cereals, pulses, vegetables, and fruit—was considered a more civilized form of food than meat. The philosopher Musonius Rufus, who was (atypically for a Stoic) a vegetarian, considered meat-eaters less civilized and "slower in intellect." The early Imperial historian Tacitus contrasted the luxury and decadence of the Roman table in his own time with the simplicity of the Germanic diet of fresh wild meat, foraged fruit, and cheese, devoid of imported seasonings and elaborate preparations. At the same time, "barbarians" might be stereotyped as ravenous carnivores. The Historia Augusta describes the emperors Didius Julianus and Septimius Severus as disdaining meat in favor of vegetables, while the first emperor born of two barbarian parents, Maximinus Thrax, is said to have devoured mounds of meat. Diet thus symbolized a clash of cultures, emphasizing the divide between the city and the wild. For Pliny, the making of pastries was a sign that countries were at peace. The Mediterranean staples of bread, wine, and oil were sacralized by Roman Christianity, while Germanic meat consumption became a mark of paganism, as it might be the product of animal sacrifice.

Some philosophers and Christians rejected the demands of the body and the pleasures of food, and adopted fasting as an ideal. Food became simpler in general as urban life in the West diminished, trade routes were disrupted, and the rich retreated to the self-sufficiency of their country estates xxxxxx limited. As decadence came to be associated with an urban lifestyle, the church formally discouraged gluttony, and hunting in the forests and pastoralism were once again seen as simple but virtuous ways of life. HUNT pdf Augustus is reported to have had simple dining habits, lunching on bread and grapes.

Wine and beer

Although food shortages were a constant threat, http://books.google.com/books?id=MNSyT_PuYVMC&pg=PA403&lpg=PA403&dq=olive+oil+roman+empire&source=bl&ots=uKxeb0Ldc-&sig=kkhfs1lGiZcazh8iFTkdBsuOkbY&hl=en&sa=X&ei=D21sUOutO6PFyAGQp4GABQ&ved=0CFAQ6AEwBTgK#v=onepage&q=oil&f=false Italian viticulture produced an abundance of cheap wine that was shipped to Rome. Wine xxxxxx. Viticulture xxxxxx. varietals. Romans drank their wine mixed in a typical ratio of one-to-xxxx with water, or in "mixed drinks" xxxxx flavored with xxxxx. Although wine was enjoyed regularly, and the Augustan poet Horace coined the expression "truth in wine" (in vino veritas), drunkenness was disparaged.

Regional varieties such as Alban, Caecuban, and Falernian were prized. Opimian was the most prestigious vintage. Wine was also imported from Greece, Spain, and southern Gaul. Mulsum was a mulled sweet wine, and apsinthium was a wormwood-flavored forerunner of absinthe.

The Gauls brewed various forms of beer xxxx, and the Spanish for "beer", xxxx, derives from the Gaulish xxxxxx. Distillation of spirits is not thought to have been practiced till xxxxx, but xxxxxxxx. It was a Roman stereotype that Gauls had a excessive love of wine, and drinking wine "straight" (purum or merum, unmixed) was a mark of the "barbarian". The wine trade had facilitated cultural exchange in Gaul even before the Roman conquest, and hundreds of shipping vessels (amphorae)CHECK have been uncovered in Aeduan territory alone. The use of barrels for wine originated in Gaul.

Wine was a part of everyday religious observances. Before a meal, a libation was offered xxxxxx. When Romans made their regular visits to burial sites to care for the dead, they poured a libation, facilitated at some tombs with a feeding tube into the grave.

According to Strabo, the Lusitanians ate bread made from acorns, used butter instead of olive oil, and drank beer and goat's milk.

wheat prices four times greater in Rome than in Egypt