Apothermum
De Re Coquinaria, 58
The Apothermum, »after the bath » was one of the most common meal in the Roman world. It was consumed after a morning spent at the thermae. We have chosen to offer you the chef Apicius’ version. Some consider this meal as the ancestor of the semolina cake we can still enjoy today.
Ingredients
- 1/2 liter of milk
- 50 grams of semolina
- 3 tablespoons rosemary honey
- 2 cl of olive oil
- 1 pinch of ground black pepper
- 1 dl straw wine
- 2 tablespoons of sultana grape
- 3 tablespoons of slivered almonds
- 2 tablespoons of pine nuts
- A hint of fish sauce ( the garum equivalent)
Preparation
- Pour into a saucepan : the whole milk, honey, olive oil, sultanas, pine nuts and almonds. Add a turn of pepper mill (or a pinch of ground pepper) and a few drops of nuoc mam (garum). Bring to a boil.
- Pour the semolina into the preparation. Cook for 5 minutes stirring constantly. Add the wine and cook 2 more minutes.
- Pour into individual ramekins or cups and allow the preparation to rest. Serve cold, eventually decorated with a pinch of pepper.
Archeology of the bread
Since the late prehistory, cereals, savages then domesticated during the Neolithic, constituted one of the basic elements of the Mediterranean society’s diet. As the Etruscans before them, the Romans usually consumed it as porridge or a sort of non-risen pancake made in a domestic context. However, these cereals were as well incorporated in the preparation of cooked ingredients, as bread, which can thus appear in various forms depending on the cereal used.
Recent studies by Nicolas Monteix (Rouen University, France) on Pompeii’s bakeries or pistrinae, showed that the bread took several centuries before establishing itself in the Roman’s daily life. Indeed, even though bakeries dates back to the first half of the Ist century of our era, Latin authors as Plinius the ancient and Plautus mentioned the existence of pistrinae at the end of the IIIrd or the beginning of the IInd century B.-C. Since these literary references only mention Roma and its elite’s life, rather than the ordinary Romans cities as Pompeii where bread took more longer to establish itself as a daily food. In addition, this new consumption leads to important changes, both in the diet and the urban thread since the baking of bread requires access to specific facilities, which will be now considered in this development.
Pompeii, fixed by the Vesuvius’ eruption in 79, is in an excellent state of conservation and was able to show us numerous archeological remains of these facilities used in the production of bread. Researchers were able to restore the steps of bread’s fabrication and the various facilities linked to it. First the fabrication of porridge, a sort of pancake and bread require the preparation of the cereals in flour: the grinding.
Some home had manual millstone for it, then used for domestic purpose. However, areas for grinding were built to host grinders and high capacity mills, carried by men or donkey. These grinders were composed of a fixed part or meta, on which the cereal was grinded under the action of the turning grinder or catillus.
The flour obtained was then place in a mechanic kneader with tepid water, which was most commonly operated by a man. These kneaders were composed of scooped-out lava block in which were placed a metallic element, generally in iron, allowing it to mix the dough. The later was then placed on a board or in a bowl to allow it to rise and then shape the breads. Then comes the key element of the fabrication: the cooking, which left numerous archeological remains. Indeed, Pompeii and Herculanum shows us an important set of perfectly conserved remains, differentiating themselves from the common ovens rummaged trough in the rest of the Roman world. The study of these ovens and their situation showed that the cooking of bread was not reserved to pistrinae, but some large houses had their own bread oven. These ovens are most commonly built in bricks or tiles, even though the areas to put the bread in the oven, the mouth, are constituted of basalt’s planks. The right cooking of the bread is ensured by construction system, a vault of brick keeping the heat and restoring it during the cooking. Concerning the fuel, other than wood, N. Monteix’s studies showed that in Pompeii Olive stones were widely used because it contains a high caloric power.
Therefore, it can be seen that bread knows a rather long development, and leads to the construction of numerous facilities. In Pompeii, bread seems to be an new element since a political candidate used a representation of distribution as an argument to be elected (see photo).
Bibliography
- http://cefr.revues.org/328
- http://archeoportfolio.efrome.it/pistrina/indexdiapo.htm
- https://www.academia.edu/5469300/Cuisines_et_boulangeries_en_Gaule_romaine
An Anthropology of bread
« Bread and circuses »
It is said that Julius Caesar ate garlic bread for breakfast … Cereals were indeed the base of the Roman’s diet. Besides millet, sesame, oat, rye or barley, there was wheat,which flour was used to prepare bread .
Before the introduction of refined wheat (Triticum) in Rome, during the fifth century BC, rather than bread, roman citizens ate a kind of spelt porridge (Triticum spelta). The spelt, also called » Gallic’s wheat », is a cereal, which grain’s protective husk was kept. This meal earned the Romans the nickname « porridge eaters » by the Greeks, far ahead in bakery.
The naked wheat Triticum allowed the Romans to manufacture a thinner flour and hence bread, which rapidly supplanted the older preparations derived from Triticum spelta . However, this new Roman bread was not exactly the same bread as ours and had a significantly higher caloric intake.
The production of bread could be done directly from home, regarding the Villae, where ovens can systematically be found, while in the cities the bread was prepared and sold by bakers ( pistor triticarius ). Flours of different particle sizes were used (fine flour or Siligo, the medium-sized Simila and the wholemeal cibarium) along with various sorts of cereals in order to obtain a variety of breads: white or black bread, leavened or unleavened bread, spiced bread, poppy seeds’ bread et caetera. You could even find it in the shape of long run conservation dry biscuits intended for sailors. With the custom of the feast, the bread could be found in all kind of shapes: poetic such as lyres or birds, but also bawdy shapes. However, the most common bread remained the loaf of barley bread, cheap and consistent, it was consumed by the gladiators.
Indeed, from the second century until Aurelian, the citizens of Rome, favored by social laws of distribution of certain food (frumentariae leges), received grains, bread and olive oil. These were the same laws that the satirical poet Juvenal judged demagogic and denounced by the famous expression “panem et circuses”, « bread and circuses ». Caesar and Augustus did not dare to remove these laws, however they reduced the number of beneficiaries.
Bibliography
- http://www.cerealialudi.org/en/alimentazione/cibo-e-alimentazione-nella-roma-antica/
- http://www.tibursuperbum.it/eng/main.htm
- http://www.musees-bourgogne.org/fic_bdd/dossiers_fichier_pdf/1167309052.PDF
- http://www.wetterenoise.be/fr/pain/histoire/jeux.html