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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Sealion War

We had a great event this past weekend.

I was running the Arts and Sciences competition and competing in the rapier war.  Upon arriving I talked to a friend of mine, Lord Kerry, who is one of Baroness Caitrin’s Sergants.  We were talking about my heavy armour being almost done, and he offered to loan me the extra pieces.  So I agreed, picked up my armour and we were good to go.  The Heavy war was up first on the saturday.

I had a blast as a pikeman.  I have a few favorite moments from the heavy war.  The first one was when I hit a friend of mine in the stomach during the bridge battle; it was a friend of mine who is also a fencer.  My next great moment was fighting beside Baron while we fought another knight and a few more.  Another great moment was towards the end of the last battle.  We had essentially won victory and were mopping up the last of the Segirtians when I saw their Baron Ming.  He was legged and the only other fighters near us were archers.  I called out for single combat with him.  I managed to stay alive for about two minutes, which was more than I, or anyone else expected.  A knight took my place and slew the baron.

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