Early in July I headed back to Wycombe Museum after doing an Iron Age food day to do a Roman cooking day! I worked with families to create dishes from Roman cookbooks by Apicius and Columella.
We started with a salad from Columella, which involved crushing salad leaves with chopped leek and soft white cheese (feta is good). Mixing in some vinegar with peppercorns crushed in a mortarium added a bit of a bite.
We then made Apicius’ roast tuna with a vinaigrette including the famous garum, a fish sauce. You can still get a Thai fish source that’s quite similar. It smells awful but makes food taste amazing.
We finished with another from Apicius which was boiled ostrich! The sauce involved making a roux from red wine and flour, and then adding vinegar and garum as well as crushed coriander seeds and dates. This was, perhaps, the most popular dish.
Throughout the day we talked about where all the ingredients came from, with some of the most exotic like peppercorns and coriander being traded from India to the Roman Empire, and on to Britain, while some are very local like the flour, celery seeds and leeks. We also talked about how these recipes would be for the very richest people, perhaps some in Londinium would have had access to such exotic ingredients as ostrich!
The table and storage wares were used for their original purposes, from grinding food on mortaria, to storing dates in a carrot amphora, and drinking mulsum (a spiced wine but we used grape juice) from little Samian cups poured from an authentic flagon.
All the kit I use is made by an amazing group of craftspeople, e.g. Graham Taylor of Potted History, Trinity Court Potteries, Gilbert Bourroughes, and the metalwork by Steve Norris of Red Dog Forge. My outfit was based on a 2nd century tunic found in a grave in northern France and drawings of Roman people by Jane Huggett.
kim biddulph 