“Don’t tell me what’s in it!” Some Thoughts on Roman Food
The Problematic Reputation of Roman Food
“Don’t tell me what’s in it!”
That was a common refrain in my household as my Mum went to taste something new my father had cooked. Please note, both my parents were excellent cooks, but my mother was a fussy eater. If you wanted her to try something different, she needed to be ignorant of what was in it.
Why?
Because just the thought of that ingredient or combination of ingredients would turn her off the idea of even tasting the food. She had similar problems in relation to how foods were made. Once she had eaten the meal and enjoyed it, you could tell her, assuming the ingredients were not “gross”. He did she define “gross”? It was a vibe thing.
I can tell you, garum would never have passed my mother’s lips owing to how it was made. Might I have been able to sneak some in. Probably. Would she have been okay with it after the fact? Probably not. Why? In the words of Sally Grainger at the Colloquia Ceranea conference on Friday night:
I blame Mary Beard.
Mary Beard never passes up the opportunity to describe the production of Rome’s favourite condiment in the most lurid manner possible. Her descriptions of garum production are stomach churning. To make matters worse, they aren’t historically inaccurate; however, she never describes the outcome of the fermentation process.
Garum isn’t the “juices of putrefied fish guts” any more than wine is “mouldy grape juice”. Although on reflection, my mother didn’t particularly like wine either.
In any event, Roman cuisine should not be considered sprinkled with rancid products, and to my shock, at the conference Sally shared that this is a commonly held perception. An incorrect perception which she blames on Mary Beard. I don’t think Mary Beard is wholly responsible, but she certainly bears a significant portion of it. I am shocked by this perception because I watched a documentary devoted to underwater archaeology more than a decade ago which included the making and subsequent testing of garum. It discovered that garum wasn’t overly fishy and was high in sodium glutamates - the SG in MSG.
Academic Complicity in Denigrating Roman Food
Sally’s paper drew my attention to the fact that papers are still being written, published, and assigned to students describing Roman food as unpalatable, but eaten anyway. I am currently reading one of the papers she referred to in her presentation, and I have to say I agree with her horror in relation to what it says. Charles Feldman (2005) Roman Taste which puts forward the following "wisdom":
No other Roman ingredient spans the dimension of offensiveness as well as garum. The literary descriptions that opened this article and a little intuition tell us garum, a sauce made from rotting fish parts, was harsh-tasting, and foul-smelling. [Page 21]
“Intuition” informed his decision. If I read that in an undergraduate essay I would have steam coming out of my ears and I would be devoting a significant portion of my afternoon to trying to figure out how to diplomatically say “this is completely unacceptable rubbish!” This is as appropriate as the famous dream citation meme:
 |
At least this was for existential philosophy (you can find the full details here.) |
In addition to this, Feldman states the following as his understanding of taste:
Certain flavor sensations, in their purest form, refer to primal taste preferences. They are easily recognizable, have universal appeal, and are the essential components of gastronomic appreciation. These sensations can be categorized within a culinary quadrangle of flavors: sweet, sour, salt and bitter. [Page 12].
This statement is incorrect. A fifth basic taste has been added to these following the 12th International Symposium on Olfaction and Taste in 1997: umami. He does not use the term “umami” once. A google scholar search shows 9 academic publications using the terms “garum”, “umami”, and “sodium glutamate” dating between 1950 and 2004. These articles provided facts based in science rather than intuition. The fact that Feldman is a food scientist who did his PhD on Roman dining makes his interpretation of Roman cuisine, his failure to recognise umami as a fifth flavour, and his use of intuition to pass judgement on an ancient condiment even worse.
Now I must say that Feldman does use a number of primary sources, but he read them and came away with what I consider deeply problematic interpretations such as this:
However, what if certain Roman elites, deliberately served foods that were generally perceived as distasteful? Initial revulsion would preclude all but a small set of Roman eaters. The group’s intimate encounter with this distasteful food could be a marker of inclusive Roman savvy. [Page 18].
He implies that aristocratic Romans gaslighted the rest of society into thinking that food they personally acknowledged as bad-tasting was a delicacy. Much of his argument is based on the way the sources seem to talk about condiments and spices. These are difficult to interpret as a whole.
A Spice Case Study: Asafoetida
I will give an example of one spice that I have personally investigated which Feldman refers to in his opening quote from the Roman comedian Plautus: asafoetida.
They [Romans] serve sorrel, cabbage, beets, spinach, flavored with coriander, fennel, garlic, parsley, pour in a pound of asafetida, grate in murderous mustard … They use for seasonings, not seasonings but screech-owls, to eat the entrails out of living guests. This explains why people here have short lives—filling their bellies full of fodder of this sort, ghastly to mention, not merely to eat (Plaut. Pseud. 815–25). [Page 8].
This is obviously written completely over-the-top for comic affect, something Feldman only acknowledged in an end note, but then says this quote informed his entire argument:
Through the tongue-in-cheek remarks of his characters, Plautus portrayed everyday life of Romans as a whole society. Plautus’ viewpoint broadly informs the following discussion on ancient flavor perception, even though this article is primarily focused on elite Roman “taste.” [Endnote 2, page 26].
Feldman doesn’t explicitly describe Plautus as a comedian which I consider a terrible omission on his part. He doesn’t provide a in-depth description of asafoetida, which given the general tenor of his argument is surprising because it literally has the word “fetid” in its name, and rightly so - it stinks. But this does not mean it tastes bad. By his "intuitive logic" applied to garum, asafoetida would be unappetising. Perhaps it should be understood as one of the seasonings used to make food bitter that he describes in pages 12-3 and 20-1.
I am not sure what form asafoetida was traded in during antiquity, so I purchased some unadulterated asafoetida resin from Sri Lanka to add to my historical medical materials collection. It came in a little 2.7 gram block. The asafoetida you buy at the store, either by name or it’s Hindi name, “hing”, is typically processed and cut with either wheat flour or turmeric.
The pure resin did not initially smell too bad, when I took it out of its sealed baggy, but I needed to cut it (it was surprisingly hard) to get it to fit in a little jar. Because of its smelly reputation, I was using a screw top instead of a cork. After a couple of days, I found the time to label it and disguise the modern screw top and I opened it. The smell was significantly stronger, so I wonder if the newly cut surfaces react to the air to produce the smell. If so, grinding would definitely release a very strong smell. I asked my brother to compare the smell of the pure resin to the processed asafoetida; he described the resin as having a stronger sulphur-like scent.
 |
| Unprocessed asafoetida in a jar from my materia medica collection |
So asafoetida smells, perhaps even stinks. Online blogs warn you that it smells, and even suggest that you “double-bag” it, i.e. keep it in a container inside another container so as to not have its smell leach into your pantry. I took this advice and brought a jar large enough to hold the container it was sold in. It was that advice that influenced my screw-top jar decision for my collection.
Yet despite its smell, once cooked it doesn’t stink at all. As a spice it gives a depth of flavour to your dish adding a dash of something between onion and garlic. I have only cooked with it once so far, and I used a tiny amount cautiously - the recipe suggested a quarter of a teaspoon - as it was a new spice to me. Tonight I’m cooking the same dish and I will use the entire amount with confidence.
A Recipe Case Study: Peppery Sauce For Chicken
In order to support his views on Roman taste Feldman quotes one recipe from our only surviving recipe book attributed to Apicius. I will quote what he quoted:
Pound 31 peppercorns, add 1 wine-glass of best liquamen, 1 of caroeneum, 11 of water, and set it in the steam (De re coq. II.II.4) [Page 20]
He follows this up with: “Are we to believe that this recipe provided for a pleasurable flavor? The thirty-one peppercorns most certainly made for a volatile concoction.”
Being the children of cooks, my brother and I analysed this recipe. Side note: My brother heavily spices his food, so he was finding many of Feldman’s arguments ludicrous if not offensive to him. Now 31 peppercorns are a lot, but it depends on how much food you are preparing. Many of Apicius’ recipes cater to a large amount of people. I looked up the Latin:
4. ALITER DE PULLO. Piperis grana XXXI conteres, mittis liquaminis optimi calicem, carenis tantundem, aquae undecim mittis et ad vaporem ignis pones.
Firstly, this was a sauce which was meant to be served with chicken (perhaps a minced chicken dish), not on its own which Feldman's criticism implies. Second, it’s impossible to determine just how much liquid the pepper is suspended in because of the measurement. This word translated as "wine-glass" is calix. Calix can mean “wine-glass”; it’s actually where we get our word “chalice”, but it can also mean “cooking pot” according to agricultural authors (see Cato and Varro). Calix is not a standard Roman measurement. For the sake of argument I am going to suggest it measures 150 mls on the basis of a modern standard wine pour. So our reconstructed recipe reads something like this:
- 150 millilitres of liquamen (a fermented fish sauce like garum);
- 150 millilitres of carenum (sweet wine boiled down to one third);
- 1.65 litres of water;
- 31 peppercorns, pounded (the author doesn’t specify white or black; I doubt try mean long pepper as it is normally specified).
So our 31 peppercorns might have been suspended in almost 2 litres of liquid (1950 millilitres), some of which was concentrated wine and heavy in sodium glutamates! Even if we halve the size of the calix, that amount of pepper is still not extraordinary for a spicy sauce tempered by a sweet wine and sodium glutamates. Given that this sauce was then heated through by steam would suggest that the sauce did not reduce significantly and it was served with chicken. A single individual consuming in one sitting without the chicken, which Feldman seems to be suggesting, is like the person eating a jar of mayonnaise: it might have happened, but it’s weird!
Waiting For Garum
I have wanted to buy garum for years, perhaps decades (wow! I am getting old 😢), but I have been distrustful of whether these products have been made in an authentic Roman fashion. It is possible to make garum yourself, but it is time consuming, tedious, and stinky.
I thoroughly recommend Max Miller’s “Tasting History” channel on YouTube, where he went through the process of making garum and tasting the outcome. You can find the video here. In addition to his description of the smell and taste of the final product. His stated it was not strongly fishy smelling, tasting more “meaty” than “fishy”, astringent, less salty than Asian fish sauces, different to the garums (yes I know the plural of garum is gara, but not everyone who reads this necessarily knows how to decline Latin - don't be a snob), he had purchased and a little spicy. At no point does his description match that which Feldman “intuited”. Indeed, he didn’t even pull a face after taking a sip of the stuff straight. That is not the behaviour of a man partaking of something “harsh-tasting, and foul-smelling”.
Max Miller also states explicitly that you do not want to make the stuff yourself, but his comparison to bought garum ratcheted up my concerns for purchasing the stuff. So when Sally Grainger also mentioned in her paper her own experiences in making garum, referencing the work and products of a Portuguese project called “Selo de Mar” she had my attention. I now had a recommendation I could trust. In the lunch break (otherwise called 9pm for me) I went online and ordered two bottles of garum - one made from sardines and another made from mackerel. Once they arrive I will write a follow up blog.
Conclusion
A proper understanding of Roman food is dependent upon understanding the true natures of ingredients and measurements. Historical food is an area where reproduction and experimentation can advance our understanding better than another reading of our sources. That is why the work of scholars like Sally Grainger is vital, the work of recipe re-creators like Max Millar is informative, and the knowledge of re-enactors is an untapped academic resource.
I have advice for people (students of antiquity or not):
- Don’t assume Roman food is gross because of how some ingredients were made.
- Don’t assume Roman food will not suit your palate because of poorly conceived academic research.
- Don’t assume anything about Roman food on the basis of comedic sources.
- And don’t assume anything about Roman recipes until you look at what a measurement might suggest about proportions
Do these things, and you will be doing better than some academics. And I will come back to this topic when my garum arrives to give you my personal thoughts on the smell and taste.
Bibliography
Apicius, De Re Coquinara - The Latin Library.
Feldman, C. (2005). "Roman Taste." Food, Culture & Society, 8(1), 7–30. https://doi.org/10.2752/155280105778055407
Ninomiya, K. (2002). "Umami: a universal taste." Food Reviews International, 18(1), 23–38. https://doi.org/10.1081/FRI-120003415
And for my of Sally Grainger's excellent work check out her:
- Blog: Sapores Antiqui: A taste of the ancient world.
- YouTube channel: A taste of the ancient world.
- Academia.edu profile: Sally Grainger.
- And for a list of her books: Wikipedia: Sally Grainger
Comments
Post a Comment