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| Cyrenean gold drachm showing silphion image |
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| Ancient silphion coin |
The Apicius is the only ancient cookbook that has survived in full; thus it is a most important source of knowledge about the cuisine of Ancient Rome. Besides a few isolated recipes scattered over the literature, another work to mention is the early farming handbook De agricultura by Marcus Porcius Cato (2.nd century BC). Social life and feasts in the first century AD are very vividly described in an entertaining narrative Cena Trimalchionis (“The Banquette of Trimalchio”), which is part of a larger cycle, Satyricon, attributed to the renowned aesthete and courtier of Nero, Gaius Petronius “Arbiter Elegantiae” (of Quo Vadis? fame). Last but not least, one should mention Virgil's poem moretum which glorifies country life and describes poetically the preparation of a paste made from raw garlic, ripened cheese and herbs; see also rue.
Silphion was highly praised first by Greek and later by Roman cooks and also highly prized. The plant proved impossible to cultivate; it thrived only in areas free of any human cultivation. For centuries, the silphion populations were carefully conserved and harvested by fixed, time-approved rules; but in the first century BC, the plant became increasingly rare due to both overharvesting and damage by wars. Possibly, the populations would have recovered if they had been strictly protected, but grazing sheep destroyed whatever silphion plant was left, as Plinius reports. The very last root ever collected was sent to Emperor Nero.
Cuisine in ancient Rome was fundamentally different from the cooking style now most associated with Italy: Noodles (pasta) were unknown, tomatoes did not grow outside of the American continent, and even garlic was significantly less popular than today. Yet olive oil has been used since millennia in the Mediterranean, both for cooking and as a lamp fuel.
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Flowers of giant fennel, Ferula communis, a plant often
thought related to ancient silphion.
www2.cinet.it © G. Gandolfo |
Besides a host of herbs some of which are still characteristic of today's Italy (lovage, celery, bay leaves) and some herbs that have fallen into disfavour since (the bitter rue and pennyroyal, Mentha pulegium, a specific kind of mint) and their favourite condiment mustard, the ancients used other flavourings not found in today's Italian cooking. There was a general preference of lavishly flavoured foods, and cooks often employed strong flavours many contemporaries would have problems getting used to; even wine was flavoured with rose flowers.
Most essential was liquamen, a fish sauce obtained as a by-product in the production of anchovy (fermented fish) and probably similar to products found in today's South East Asia (nam pla [น้ำปลา] in Thailand, nuoc mam [nước mắm] in Vietnam); it was used for the pungent sauces that accompanied boiled meat or sea food analogous to the sauces for which today French cuisine is so famous. Most popular among the Eastern spices used for such sauces were cumin, black pepper and ginger; even more praised was long pepper, whose high prize and but sporadic availability, though, limited culinary usage. Other spices, like cinnamon, cassia, cloves and Indian bay-leaves (malobathrum, malabathrum) were known but played a lesser rôle in cooking; these were more important for perfumery.
Probably even more amazing compared to today's taste was the marked preference for sweet-sour-spicy or even solely sweet-spicy combinations. The most important source of sweetness was honey; dried fruits (e.g., raisins or dates) played a much less prominent rôle. Honey was also used for preservation, even of meat. On the other hand, sweetmeats were commonly enriched with a dash of black pepper (see also poppy).
To set sour accents, the Romans mostly used vinegar (and sometimes a decoction of sumac berries), because citrus fruits were unknown except citron, a close but juiceless relative of lemon. Concentrated grape juice, made by boiling young must down to one half (caroenum) or even one third (defrutum) of its original volume, was also frequently employed. A very similar concoction, verjus, was part of French cooking until the end of the Renaissance.
One could speculate that silphion has somehow survived and is now known by another name. Some think that it is a member of genus Laserpitium (named after the ancient spice), other consider it more similar to Ferula, where asafetida belongs to. Considering, however, that the plant does not survive in cultivated area, it is extreme improbable to have endured in the densely populated coastal area of North Africa. Further South, the Sahara has considerably grown in the last two millennia, and if there have been any retreats of silphion, they must be buried under desert sand by now.
