#ancient recipes

[greenheart-anon]

[tulliolamonster]

Today I made Roman savillum with honey and chopped dates! I didn’t have as much honey as I wanted (last time I made this it required quite a bit to not just taste like ricotta), so the dates were added for texture and flavor.

I’m leaving it to sit in the pan for a bit in the hopes it absorbs more of the honey. It’s a very nice golden yellow color in person, and I hope it tastes as lovely as that color appears.

In the future, I’d like to see what flavors might pair best with this. I currently have some pears that might work well with it, but I’ve also heard of people pairing it with ground black pepper, so I’m interested to see how that might taste as well! I’ll update y’all on how it tastes :3

I’m using Max Miller’s Tasting History recipe, which uses Cato’s De Agri Cultura as a source

[historybizarre]

This 1700s Gumbo has ALL THE THINGS | Ancient Recipes With Sohla

Sohla is cooking up an old school Creole favorite - a gumbo recipe from the 1700s that contains 4 types of protein in one pot. This delicious stew combines West African and Native American cultural traditions with French and Spanish ingredients, plus it’s the official cuisine of Louisiana. Learn more about it’s history in this episode of Ancient Recipes With Sohla!

[the-world-that-was]

Roman “French Toast” by Apicius

Today, we'll be making another Roman recipe, from Apicius - a writer and gourmet from the 1st century AD. This recipe is very similar to modern French toast, but is really only a little plainer than modern renditions of it!

The original recipe is pretty short, and not very descriptive, so I've decided to reconstruct this in a slightly different way.

"Slice fine white bread, remove the crust, and break it into large pieces.  Soak these pieces in milk and beaten egg, fry in oil, and cover with honey before serving." - Apicius, 7.13.3

In any case, let's now take a look at The World That Was! Follow along with my YouTube video, above!

Ingredients

Bread loaf (or pre-sliced bread) 3 eggs 200ml / 1 cup milk honey (to taste) olive oil (to fry)

Method 1 - Bread To begin with, we need some bread. You can of course use any kind of bread. I made some Roman bread last week, so check that out if you want to know how I made the loaf I used here! In any case, slice your loaf of bread into slices, each one about as big as your finger. We don't want these too thin - because then they'll disintegrate in the egg dredge, but we don't want them too thick, or your toast won't cook correctly.

2 - Prepare the egg dredge Now we need to make our egg dredge. Start by pouring your milk into a bowl or tub that's big enough for your slices of bread. Then, crack your eggs into the milk, and whisk it together until it's cohesive. Roman chefs may have used dove or wildfowl eggs, but chickens were also common in the kitchens of Rome, so I'm using chicken eggs for this. Depending on what kind of alternative you use, you may need to add more eggs than I have.

3 - Soak your bread Next, place your slices of bread into the dredge, and leave them there for about 30 seconds. Don't leave them too long, we really only want the exterior to be coated in our egg mix. When one side has finished soaking, flip it over and coat the other side, again for about 30 seconds.

4 - Cook your Bread Pour a few tablespoons of olive oil onto a frying pan, and let it heat up. When the oil starts to shimmer, place one or two of your slices into the pan and let them cook for about two minutes, or until you start to see the underside turn a deep golden brown. When that side is cooked, flip it over and let the other side cook for the same amount of time.

5 - Serve Serve these hot, when fresh off the pan. Drizzle honey over the top of them before you serve them up! If you want to imagine you're an extraordinarily rich Roman, you can sprinkle some ground cinnamon over the tops of these before eating!

[literalliterature]

Thanks Sohla

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[ID: A cute, cartoony drawing of Sohla El-Waylly, a Bengali woman with brown skin and black hair in a bob. She is wearing large tortoiseshell glasses and has floral tattoos on both arms. She wears a light blue apron over a gray shirt and has a wooden spoon in one hand. She is smiling and shrugging with her eyes closed. The words "Why The Hell Not?" are written in curly black text around her. A silver fish, a red pepper, a cracked egg, and chocolate hover in an arc over her head, and there is a yellow circle behind her. End ID.]

[sohlaelwaylly]

[lamajaoscura]

Eat Like The Ancient Babylonians: Researchers Cook Up Nearly 4,000-Year-Old Recipes

Written on four tablets, three of which date back no later than 1730 B.C., the recipes are considered to be the oldest known. And they taste pretty good, says a scholar who re-created them.

“For a long time, says Barjamovic, scholars thought the tablets might be medical texts. In the 1940s, a researcher named Mary Hussey suggested the writing was actually recipes, but "people really didn't believe her" at the time, he says.”

[casuallyshadowytastemaker]

POTATO BREAD WITH AROMATIC HERBS