Apicius text New York Academy of Medicine

The Food of the Late Roman Legion

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This was my entry for Avacal/Tir Righ War, which is a war between neighboring principalities.  I was thankful to get to use a friends full camping kitchen to prepare these dishes instead of ours.  The dishes aren’t very complicated, but with four dishes that all had to be ready about the same time it was tough.  The judges loved the taste of all of the dishes, which I was surprised about, I wasn’t expecting them all to taste as good as they did.  I lost some points by not using period cooking vessles or heat source, though I did use period cooking methods.  But I gained points by making my own liquamen and using spelt instead of a more modern grain.

I’ll be doing more research into period grains in the future.  It was something that I did at the last minute for this entry, but I can’t imagine how bad the biscuts would have been had they been made with bread flour instead of cracked and lightly ground spelt.

Summary

Roman legionary food from the fourth century.  The recipes I have created are adapted from recipes in The Roman Cookery Book: a Critical Translation of The Art of Cooking by Apicus. Which is a translation of a fourth century Roman cookbook.  The originals of the recipes I’ve adapted are later in the documentation.

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A&S 50 part III

I’ve decided that since my projects are growing beyond single dish experiments I’m going to change how I count for A&S 50.  Instead of counting multiple recipes as one I will be counting each recipe I do.  This is partly to save my sanity, and partly because I just realized Read more…

Salting Meat

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After the Lions Gate A&S Defenders competition I got a lot of questions about how to salt meat.  So I decided to put my research together into an article for the local newsletters.  So, here it is.

Salting Meat

The preservation of food has always been a major concern of civilization.  Modernly we tend to rely on refrigeration to preserve our foods. Cooling was also a method for food preservation in the middle ages, however, for obvious reasons there were limitations. Other methods needed to be devised to preserve foods, especially regarding meat. In this article I will be focusing on the medieval method of salting meats to preserve them for later consumption.  The methods I describe are those which would have been used in England and France in the late medieval period.

The salting of meat was a common practice in the middle ages.  This allowed for the preservation, storage, and transport of meat without refrigeration.  According to Food in Medieval England “it was a routine procedure on big estates for deer to be hunted according to season, when the meat was at its best, and the venison prepared and stored in larders till needed, and in this case heavier salting would be necessary” (Woolgar, Serjeantson and Waldron 181).  The salting of venison was common in great households, so much so that there were quite often men whose sole job was the preservation of food.  They would accompany the huntsmen so as to make sure that the deer were treated properly and would be preserved properly (Woolgar, Serjeantson and Waldron 181).

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Spice Blends

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Here are three common spice blends that I’ve made over the years.  It’s not that hard to create your own version.  Most versions have the same ingredients in differing quantities.

Grains of paradise can be difficult to come by.  I use a combination of cardamom and pepper to get a similar taste.  If you live in the US it’s a bit easier to come by than in Canada, though I don’t know why that is.

Galingale is fairly easy to come by, as long as you don’t mind using the South-East Asian version of the spice.  The version which is native to Europe has not been cultivated in several hundred years.

Powder Douce:

Source: Janet Hinson’s translation of Le Ménagier de Paris

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Apple Pie

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Source

To make pies of greene Apples.
Take your Apples and pare them
cleane, and core them as ye wil a quince
then make your coffin after this man-
ner, take a litle fayre water, and halfe
a fishe of butter, and a litle Saffron,
and set all this upon a chafindyshe, tyll
it bee hote, than temper your flower
with this sayd licour, and the white of
two egges, & also make your coffin and
season your Apples with Cinamon,
Ginger and Sugar inough. Then put
them into your coffin, and bake them.

A Proper New Booke of Cookery 1575

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Baked Venison: Fresh and Preserved

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This was done for the Barony of Lions Gate A&S Defenders competition in February 2010.  The competition was that your entry had to be related to your persona, and you needed one page of documentation to show that.  I made Baked Venison and Cameline Sauce.  I made two kinds of Baked Venison, one with salted venison and one with fresh.  I served them with a cameline sauce.  Here are the highlights of my entry:

Source

Venison

When looking for a baked venison, or venison pie, recipe I found seven different recipes, sometimes from the same cookbook, spanning from 1393 till 1596.  I have arranged them in order with my commentary here.

DEER VENISON. As this meat is tougher than fawn or goat, it must be parboiled and larded all along it: and in cooking, it must be put in plenty of wine, and when partly cooked, ground mace added; and it must be eaten with cameline. – Item, in pastry, let it be parboiled, larded along its length, and eaten cold with cameline. (Pichon)

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Examination of Medieval Sauces

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In August of 2009 I subjected my friends to my attempts at Cameline sauce (a sort of cinnamon based dipping sauce for meat), and Mustard.  I needed more practice with documentation and wrote this up as if it were for a competition.

15th Century Cameline Sauce

This recipe is from “Two Fifteenth Century Cookery-books: About 1430-1450” by Thomas Austin. I first found this recipe as the basis of Daniel Meyers’ Cameline sauce (Meyers). Instead of following his version of this (which was more of an amalgamation of several different Cameline recipes) I followed the given recipe.

Source

Sauce gamelyne. Take faire brede, and kutte it, and take vinegre and wyne, & stepe þe brede therein,
and drawe hit thorgh a streynour with powder of canel, and drawe hit twies or thries til hit be smoth;
and þen take pouder of ginger, Sugur, and pouder of cloues, and cast þerto a litul saffron and let hit be
thik ynogh, and thenne serue hit forthe. (Austin)

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