I have no idea what a flamingo tongue tastes like. Pliny the Elder tells us in his Encyclopedia of Natural History that the ancient gourmand, Apicius, said that they have “a specially fine flavor.” I also have no idea if milk-fed snails are delicious or if boiled sow’s womb would satisfy the palate. Wealthy ancient Romans loved these dishes, however, and the recipes for cooking them survive in the earliest known cookbook, Apicius De Re Coquinaria.
The Apicius cookbook that we know today consists mostly of recipes from the third century C.E., but many date back centuries earlier. It is believed that several recipes named for Apicius may have originally come from the kitchens of the famous food-lover himself.
Little is known about the life of Marcus Gavius Apicius, an extraordinarily wealthy Roman who lived during the time of Emperor Tiberius. But we do know about the dramatic way in which he died. My novel, Feast of Sorrow, imagines how Apicius might have met such a tragic end. Since almost everything else we know about his life revolves entirely around food and because his most important legacy is the De Re Coquinaria cookbook, I had a challenge on my hands. Namely, how was I to write about food that I had never tasted and that contained ingredients I had never even heard of?
"How was I to write about food that I had never tasted and that contained ingredients I had never even heard of?"
Fortunately, I wasn’t the first to explore the food of Apicius. Food historian Sally Grainger, translator of the De Re Coquinaria, published a companion cookbook, Cooking Apicius. And other food historians, such as Andrew Dalby, Ilaria Gozzini Giacosa, Mark Grant, and Francine Segan have published cookbooks that modernize ancient Roman recipes for today’s audiences. I began there, cooking everything from Parthian chicken to spelt bread to honey cakes.
Many ancient Roman dishes are already familiar to us – French toast, frittatas, fried dough, mustard beets and more – and thus were easy to make. Ingredients for other Apicius dishes proved to be a bigger challenge. In 2008 when I began testing the recipes, it was difficult to find some of the spices. Now you can find virtually anything you want via the Internet, be it asafoetida (the closest taste to the now extinct herb silphium), fish sauce (Italian colatura) or date sauce.
In the beginning, I cooked from the translations found in the cookbooks by the authors mentioned above. Gradually, as I began to understand the ingredients better, I became more adventurous, interpreting recipes myself. What is interesting about De Re Coquinaria is that it was written specifically for chefs who knew the methods of cooking during the time that it was first scribed. Each recipe consists of a list of ingredients without measurements, and a rudimentary set of instructions.
That meant I could interpret a dish in whatever way I wanted to. It led to great experimentation in the kitchen. Fish sauce and asafoetida are very powerful, so toying with those ingredients to strike the right balance was key. Sometimes it made sense to add an ingredient. For example, the recipes don’t call for olive oil but our methods of cooking in the pan might require it. What mattered most to me was the flavors and if I could be as true as possible to the ingredients and still make them palatable for the modern audience.
Cooking the recipes of Apicius meant that my descriptions of meals in the book are more accurate. It also gave me a sense of what the smells of the kitchen and the textures of the ingredients have been like. One of the greatest joys of writing Feast of Sorrow has been testing – and tasting – the recipes.
I have also asked other chefs to try their hand at modernizing an Apicius recipe. Chef Michael Pagliarini, owner of the Cambridge, Massachusetts restaurant s Giulia and Bendedetto, created a delicious Apicius-inspired lentil and mussels dish. The Apicius cookbook contains over a hundred recipes for sauces. My interpretation of a sauce for mushrooms has become a family favorite.
Sauce for Mushrooms – Apicius 7.13
This is a simple but delicious dish that makes an excellent accompaniment for steak.
Ingredients
- •15 ml (1 tablespoon) olive oil
- •454 grams (1 pound) sliced mushrooms (e.g. oyster, cremini, baby portabella, shiitake)
- •Pinch of salt
- •30 ml (2 tablespoons) vincotto (available on Amazon or at specialty Italian shops)
- •2.5 ml (½ teaspoon) ground black pepper
- •2.5 ml (½ teaspoon) ground coriander
Preparation
Add oil to a hot pan. Add mushrooms and a pinch of salt.
Cover pan and let it cook for three minutes on medium heat.
Add vincotto, pepper and coriander. Stir to combine.
Continue cooking for another three minutes. If the mixture looks dry, add a little bit of water and reduce. Serve hot.
Umbrian Lentils with Steamed Mussels, Toasted Spices, Almonds and Sweet Apple Vinegar
Chef Michael Pagliarini, owner of the Cambridge, Massachusetts, restaurants Giulia and Benedetto, created this delicious Apicius-inspired lentil and mussels dish. The recipe combines the sweet, briny taste of freshly steamed mussels with a complex mixture of honey, spices, fermented fish sauce and earthy lentils.
Ingredients
For the lentils:
- •Half an onion
- •One-quarter bulb fennel
- •1 small carrot
- •1 stalk celery
- •85 grams (3 ounces) pancetta
- •30 ml (2 tablespoons) extra-virgin olive oil
- •237 ml (1 cup) lentils (Umbrian, or French de Puy)
For the spice mixture:
- •15 ml (1 tablespoon) whole black peppercorns
- •15 ml (1 tablespoon) whole coriander seeds
- •5 ml (1 teaspoon) cumin seeds
- •60 ml (¼ cup) honey
- •60 ml (¼ cup) sweet apple vinegar (or good quality cider vinegar)
For the mussels:
- •1 shallot, minced
- •15 ml (1 tablespoon) extra-virgin olive oil
- •2 bay laurel leaves
- •2.5 ml (½ teaspoon) ground black pepper
- •118 ml (½ cup) sprigs of mixed parsley, mint, and coriander/cilantro
- •1.8 kg (4 pounds) mussels, rinsed and de-bearded
- •59 ml (¼ cup) white wine
- •5 ml (1 teaspoon) colatura di alici (or fish sauce)
For assembly and serving:
- •Salt, as needed
- •Ground black pepper, as needed
- •Sweet apple vinegar or cider vinegar, as needed
- •Toasted, chopped almonds, for garnish
- •Chopped parsley, for garnish
- •Chopped cilantro, for garnish
Preparation
For the lentils: Preheat oven to 177°C (350°F). Chop the onion, fennel bulb, carrot and celery into very large pieces so they can be easily removed once they’ve given their flavor to the lentil stew. Rub the vegetables and pancetta with the olive oil and roast in a heavy bottomed pan until browned and well caramelized.
Add the lentils and cook for a few minutes in the rendered fat and olive oil. Add just enough water to cover, and continue roasting until the lentils are tender, 20 to 30 minutes. Remove and discard vegetable pieces. Season lentils with salt, set aside, and keep warm.
For the spice mixture: Toast the spices in a dry pan until aromatic. Pound them in a mortar until pulverized. Add the honey and vinegar. Mix well, and set aside.
For the mussels: In a large wide pan over medium heat, sauté the shallot in olive oil until tender. Add the bay leaves, pepper, herbs. mussels, wine, and colatura. Turn the heat up to high, cover and cook just until the mussels open. Set aside and reserve the cooking liquid.
For assembly and serving: In a mixing bowl, toss the warm lentils with the spice mixture and the cooking liquid from the mussels. Adjust the seasoning with salt, pepper and vinegar as needed. Spoon the lentil stew into warm bowls and arrange the mussels on top. Garnish with chopped almonds, parsley, and cilantro.