A VERY ROMAN CHRISTMAS
Cold Ham and Apricot Relish, Served with Spiced Wine Apicius
A Roman Christmas feast fit for an Emperor!
Digging scran shares a very special place in our hearts, it’s possibly one of the most important elements to a good dig. One unfulfilling lunch and suddenly the motivation for digging goes down hill, when we arrive at a digging rally or group dig the food vans are one of the very first things we take stock of.
Food has been with us since literally the dawn of time, we cannot survive without it, but when did people start taking an interest in what was being placed on our tables? When did food become more than just about survival?
Nowadays food is considered an art form and a way of self expression for some people, so we’ve decided to dip our toe into the cooking world by exploring the cuisine and recipes throughout history and what better place to start than the Roman Empire, looking at the Ancient Tradition of Christmas feasting.
What better place to start than the Roman Empire, looking at the Ancient Tradition of Christmas feasting.
Tasting the Past by Jacqui Wood.
Now It might sound surprising but the Roman times was full of foodies, Roman Nobility in particular were big on their feasts and cuisines. The Romans were actually responsible for the introduction of many agricultural techniques into Britain as well as the introduction of spices, fruits and vegetables from around the world. They really developed Britain’s cuisine from the simple Celtic diet of meat and basic vegetables.
The Romans were a civilisation in every aspect of the word, full of literature, architecture and most importantly food and recipes. The recipes that we will be exploring for our feast are from the Roman gastronomic master, Marcus Gavius Apicius who wrote a cookery book that gives great detail into the cuisine of Roman Nobility. Fine dining from almost 2000 years ago.
Apicius was a rather eccentric Roman who was very big on his food, an ancient foodie, but his great love of gourmet eventually led to his demise as he ended up bankrupting himself from all of this fine dining. For Apicius, having to eat ‘poor’ was a fate worse than death so he chose to go out in the best way possible, poisoning himself during one last feast.
A lot of Apicius’s recipes are not foods we would likely cook today with some rather mind boggling ingredients such as flamingo and dormice. All of the recipes that we have used for our Roman Festive Feast have been learnt from the book Tasting the Past, Recipes from Antiquity by Jacqui Wood, the Time Team Food Historian. In this book she has put together and translated a variety of recipes from Apicius’s Cookbook as well as other sources to provide us with easily made dishes for the modern cook to truly experience what it was like to dine in the past.
For Apicius, having to eat ‘poor’ was a fate worse than death so he chose to go out in the best way possible, poisoning himself during one last feast.
Roman Ingredients: Bay leaves, Olive Oil, Honey & Spelt Flour.
Apricot Relish prep.
The First Christmas Feasts.
The first extravagant Christmas Nativity feasts like we have today would have been consumed by the Romans as it was the Romans who popularised and cemented the traditional Christian Christmas into tradition during the 4th Century. A lot of the traditions and dates that we have for Christmas are believed to have come from the previous Roman Tradition of ‘Saturnalia’ which centred around the Winter Solstice and the agricultural calendar, much like the Winter Solstice traditions enjoyed by the Celtics before them.
Some of these traditions that were transferred are the act of gift giving, decorating your homes with wreaths and greenery and even a tradition rather similar to the elf on a shelf … Where a member of a Roman Household would be selected to be the ‘King’ of Saturnalia and had the very important job of mischief, ruling chaos over the normal Roman order. Order was abandoned for the festival with slaves sometimes being served by their masters.
During the great switch from Paganism to Christianity by the Roman Empire the Saturnalia Festival was replaced with the Christmas that we have today. There was even a transition period where both festivities would happen at the same time.
We decided to cook a meal fit for a Roman Christmas Feast choosing three recipes that were most likely to have been used. Now most Roman’s wouldn’t have had a kitchen, enjoying mainly cold food, eating hot delicacies such as lentil stew from street vendors and restaurants. (Roman takeaway who knew!). Therefore we chose ‘Cold Ham’ as our Christmas main with ‘Apricot Relish’ as a side dish to compliment. But we simply couldn’t have served either of these without a drink, let’s test out this ‘Spiced Wine’, basically Roman Mulled Wine right?
Certain ingredients used within these three recipes that we chose wouldn’t have been accessible to the Roman Peasant, really highlighting these as the finest of Roman Dining that would have been enjoyed by the Nobility in their Villas. One of these ingredients is the Apricot, a fruit that the Romans imported into Britain from Armenia, handily for us a fruit that you can easily buy from a supermarket today.
We managed to gather all of our ingredients from Sainsbury’s, and in only one visit, finding even the more challenging ingredients such as Muscatel Wine ( a sweet dessert wine from a specific region of France), all waiting for us on the shelves. It might have looked like a rather strange trolley full to the passers by, but to a Roman Peasant it would have been the height of gourmet cuisine.
With all of the ingredients laid out before us, there was one ingredient in particular that appeared in every single dish: Honey. Honey was a staple of the Roman diet in practically all recipes and beverages. Honey water was a particular favourite, a refreshing drink apparently, that was very popular with bee keeping a common occurrence throughout the Roman Empire.
One of these ingredients is the Apricot, a fruit that the Romans imported into Britain from Armenia, handily for us a fruit that you can easily buy from a supermarket today.
Rolling dough for the ham.
An overall dig scran rating of 8/10.
Spiced Wine Apicius - Dig Scran Rating of 10/10!
The Roman Spiced Wine was some kind of estranged cousin to the traditional Mulled Wine that we all know and love. For starters it was made from White Wine instead of Red.
Wine in the Roman Period was extremely important as drinking the right wine improved your social status yet there were strict rules. Men could drink as much wine as they liked but a Woman getting drunk now that was cause for outcry. Another social construct of Roman Wine Culture was White vs Red. White wine was drunk by the nobility and elite whereas being caught drinking red, the same as the soldiers and poor, well that was social suicide. Just what would the Romans have thought of Mulled Wine!
So instead we have a Spiced White Wine, a wine of nobility and class, flavoured with (you guessed it!) Honey, Saffron, Cinnamon and Dates, served hot.
Cooking the Spiced Wine proved to be the easiest of the dishes we chose as it was simply a case of throwing everything into a slow cooker and letting it brew. The hardest part was finding something to put the spices in, the recipe suggested a muslin bag but we chose a tea infuser instead which did the trick.
Simmering away throughout all of the extensive stages of Ham cooking, the Spiced Wine was a success! Tasting similar to a Mulled Cider, most likely from the cinnamon and honey addition. It was a sweet, warming but light drink that was easily drinkable. We can certainly see ourselves drinking a lot of it, maybe something to introduce into our own Christmas Day traditions.
Cold Ham with Apricot Relish - Dig Scran Rating of 7/10
We can describe this dish as the Roman Wellington of its time.
Both parts of this dish included what we can only assume was one of the favoured ways of cooking by the Romans: Boiling! Simply from the sheer amount of times that it was required! The ham alone required an hour and a half of boiling time overall and even then it wasn’t done!
Ham would have been a fine choice of meat back in Roman Times and would have even been served on the tables of Emperors. Yet for us it was definitely the most extensive and painful dish we cooked, requiring part boiling first before an extended simmer in some spicy fig and bay leaf water. Then it was smothered in honey (that favourite Roman ingredient) and wrapped in a dough blanket before baking in the oven. Who knew Roman Dishes could be so complex.
This complexity proved to be our nemesis on cook day, with the ham taking around 4 / 5 hours to cook overall which lead to a fight against the darkness to finish our film! This lighting stress provoked us to maybe make several executive decisions that caused slight problems, such as not waiting for the ham to cool before wrapping it in the dough and just throwing it in the oven, hoping for the best. Where did the Romans get all this time on their hands?
Despite our rather hectic finish we were rather shocked to remove the ham / pie / wellington from the oven to slice into beauty! It had worked and we can confirm it’s rather delicious, soft ham wrapped in a crisp crust sweetened by the honey drizzle, yum! We also found the apricot relish has a lovely tang to it which goes beautifully with the soft, sweet and fruity palette of the ham. All in all a success, the Romans really do know what they are doing with all this boiling and simmering.
The Apricot Relish itself was thankfully an easy aspect to the meal simply requiring halved, stoned apricots to be simmered in Muscatel Wine, Mint and Cinnamon in a pan for an hour. Such a quick task for us that it enjoyed a whole three hours in the fridge cooling to the perfect temperature to be served with the ham.
Overall the whole meal was a high success despite the near 5 hours it took to prepare and cook. Maybe a Christmas meal that needs to be cooked on Christmas Eve.
An overall dig scran rating of 8/10 and we might even cook it again!
If you enjoyed this read, you can watch us cooking below.
