Contents
• Apicius
• The Recipe

Today, my wife cooked a roman recipe. It’s from the book of Apicius, “De re coquinaria“.

Apicius

The book (or the books, the text being divided into ten books) is a compilation of various roman recipes from the 4th century AD. The recipes are traditionally attributed to the Roman “gourmet” Marcus Gavius Apicius. This man, who lived during Tiberius reign, was above all someone who likes to eat. He probably did the book about the sauces, and compiled other recipes from other cooks. The book we have today is the sum of others recipes added during the centuries after Apicius.

Roman roasted pork with honey

The Recipe

So I eat a roasted pork with honey, and a pine nut sauce. It was delicious, Romans surely know how to eat well. It’s a dish for upper classes at that time, like almost everything in Apicius. Many ingredients, commonly found today were luxury goods in Roman times.

Pine nut sauce

To eat like a Roman senator, (or some random citizen in a special day), you need to cook pork in a broth of fresh vegetables during one hour. After that, you take it out of the broth and coat it with honey. Put it in a cooking pot, add pepper, thyme and salt and make it brown in a very warm oven about 10 minutes.

Serve with the pine nut sauce (another Roman Empire recipe with wine). No olive oil in this recipe. If you’re short on vegetables, you can think of the vegetables of that time : lentils or beans for instance. Of course, avoid everything from Americas : corn, tomato, potatoes…

Bene sapiat !