The Decadent Cookbook (4 page)

Pound some rose hips with a little stock in a mortar. Add
¹
/
₈
pint stock, strain through a colander, then set aside. Take 4 calves’ brains (membranes removed), then grind them up with 8 scruples (
¹
/
₃
oz.) of pepper. Mix with the rose hip stock. Break 8 eggs, and mix them with
¹
/
₈
pint wine,
¹
/
₁₂
pint raisin wine and a little olive oil. Combine this with the brains and stock, pour into a greased dish and cook on hot ashes. Serve with finely ground black pepper.

Gather some snails, wipe them clean, and remove the membrane that seals the opening of their shells. Put them in a bowl of milk with a little salt for a day, then for a few days in plain milk. Dredge out their droppings every hour. When the snails are too fat to get back into their shells, fry them in olive oil. Serve with wine sauce.

Beat four eggs with half a pint of milk. Heat some olive oil in a pan, add the eggs and milk and cook until they form a sponge. Serve on a round dish with honey and pepper.

No Roman banquet would be complete without wine - although you may prefer not to be too authentic about this as the Romans drank their wine very sweet - 3 parts golden syrup to 4 parts Liebfraumilch will give you an idea. Sweetening was the usual method of preserving wine from the attentions of vinegar bacteria (another was mixing it with sea-water, which must have been extremely unpleasant). Wine was often flavoured with herbs and watered down before drinking. It probably tasted like sweet Martini or Cinzano.

As to the Roman manner of drinking wine, here’s Juvenal in his Sixth Satire:

She arrives from the baths, red-faced; she is so thirsty that she would drink the entire contents of a wine-urn placed at her feet. Before she eats, she takes a second sextarius - this will give her a frenzied appetite once she has thrown up on the floor and her stomach is well washed. Streams run along the marble; the golden bowl exhales the aroma of Falernian wine. Like a long snake that has fallen to the bottom of a barrel she drinks and vomits.

Roman men, of course, were far less delicate in their drinking habits.

Here are two recipes for flavoured wines from Apicius:

Pour 2 pints of wine and 15 lb of honey into a bronze pot. The wine will be boiled off as the honey melts. Heat on a slow fire, using dry wood, and stir with a wooden stick. Pour in more wine if it starts to boil over. Remove the fire and let the contents of the pot settle and grow cold. Then light another fire under the pot, boil it up again, let it cool. Repeat a third time. After this you can move the pot off the hearth. Next day, skim the wine, add 4 oz of ground pepper, 3 scruples (half a teaspoon) of mastic, a handful of saffron, the same of spikenard (or bay) leaves, and five dried dates soaked in wine until soft. Then pour in 18 pints of mild wine, mix, and serve hot or cold.

Take a large quantity of rose or violet petals, sew them into a linen bag, and soak them in wine for seven days. Then remove the petals and replace them with fresh ones. Leave these in the wine for another seven days. Repeat a third time. Then filter the wine and mix with honey before serving. Take care to use only the best and freshest petals, gathered after the dew has dried.

By Gustave Flaubert

Men of all nations were there, Ligurians and Lusitanians, Balearic Islanders, Negroes, and fugitives from Rome …

They lay upon cushions; they squatted around huge trays, and so ate; others, lying upon their bellies, reached out for lumps of meat and gorged themselves, leaning on their elbows in the placid posture of lions dismembering their prey. Late-comers, leaning against the trees, watched the low tables half hidden under the scarlet coverings, and awaited their turn.

Since Hamilcar’s kitchens were inadequate, the Council had provided slaves, dishes and couches. Oxen were roasting at great clear fires in the middle of the garden, which thus looked like a battlefield when the dead are being burned. Loaves dusted with aniseed vied with huge cheeses heavier than disks, and great bowls of wine with mighty water tankards, set close to gold filigree baskets full of flowers. Their eyes gleamed wide in delight at being at last free to gorge to their hearts’ content; and here and there they were beginning to sing.

First they were served with birds in green sauce upon plates of red clay, decorated in black relief; then with every kind of shellfish that is found on the Punic coasts, with broths thickened with wheat, beans and barley, and with cumin-spiced snails upon yellow amber dishes.

After this the tables were loaded with meats: antelopes still with their horns, peacocks still with their feathers, whole sheep cooked in sweet wine, camels’ and buffaloes’ haunches, hedgehogs in garum sauce, fried grasshoppers, and pickled dormice. Great pieces of fat were floating amid saffron in bowls of Tamrapanni wood. Everywhere was a lavish abundance of pickles, truffles, and asafoetida. There were pyramids of fruit tumbling upon honeycombs; and they had not forgotten to serve some of those silky-coated, red, fat-paunched little dogs, fattened on olive lees: a Carthaginian dish which was an abomination to other peoples. Their stomachs’ greed was titillated by the excitement and wonder of such novel fare. The Gauls, with their long hair coiled upon the top of their heads, snatched at water-melons and lemons, and crunched them peel and all. Negroes who had never seen a crawfish, tore their faces on its red spines. The Greeks, who were smooth-shaven and whiter than marble, threw the leavings of their plates behind them; while herdsmen from Brutium, clad in wolf-skins, ate in silence, their faces buried in their plates.

Night fell. The awning over the cypress avenue was drawn back, and torches were brought.

G. Flaubert,
Salammbo
(transl. by Powys Mathers).

by T. G. Smollett

The doctor … with an air of infinite satisfaction, … began: - “This here, gentlemen, is a boiled goose, served up in a sauce composed of pepper, lovage, coriander, mint, rue, anchovies, and oil! I wish for your sakes, gentlemen, it was one of the geese of Ferrara, so much celebrated among the ancients for the magnitude of their livers, one of which is said to have weighed upwards of two pounds; with this food, exquisite as it was, did the tyrant Heliogabalus regale his hounds. But I beg pardon. I had almost forgot the soup, which I hear is so necessary an article at all tables in France. At each end there are dishes of the falacacabia of the Romans; one is made of parsley, penny-royal, cheese, pine-tops, honey, vinegar, brine, eggs, cucumbers, onions, and hen-livers; the other is much the same as the
soup-maigre
of this country. Then there is a loin of veal boiled with fennel and caraway seed, on a pottage composed of pickle, oil, honey and flour, and a curious
hachis
of the lights, liver and blood of an hare, together with a dish of roasted pigeons. Monsieur le Baron shall I help you to a plate of this soup?” The German, who did not all approve of the ingredients, assented to the proposal, and seemed to relish the composition; while the marquis … was in consequence of his desire accommodated with a portion of the
soup-maigre;
and the count … supplied himself with a pigeon …

The Frenchman, having swallowed the first spoonful, made a pause; his throat swelled as if an egg had stuck in his gullet, his eyes rolled, and his mouth underwent a series of involuntary contractions and dilations. Pallet, who looked steadfastly at this connoisseur, with a view of consulting his taste, before he himself would venture upon the soup, began to be disturbed at these emotions, and observed with some concern, that the poor gentleman seemed to be going into a fit; when Peregrine assured him that these were symptoms of ecstasy, and for further confirmation, asked the marquis how he found the soup. It was with infinite difficulty that his complaisance could so far master his disgust, as to enable him to answer, “Altogether excellent, upon my honour!” And the painter, being certified of his approbation, lifted the spoon to his mouth without scruple; but far from justifying the eulogium of his taster, when this precious composition diffused itself upon his palate, he seemed to be deprived of all sense and motion, and sat like the leaded statue of some river god, with the liquor flowing out at both sides of his mouth.

The doctor, alarmed at this indecent phenomenon, earnestly inquired into the cause of it; and when Pallet recovered his recollection, and swore that he would rather swallow porridge made of burning brimstone, than such an infernal mess as that which he had tasted; the physician, in his own vindication, assured the company, that, except the usual ingredients, he had mixed nothing in the soup but some sal-armoniac instead of the ancient nitrum, which could not now be procured; and appealed to the marquis, whether such a succedaneum was not an improvement of the whole. The unfortunate
petit-maître,
driven to the extremity of his condescension, acknowledged it to be a masterly refinement; and deeming himself obliged, in point of honour, to evince his sentiments by his practice, forced a few more mouthfuls of this disagreeable potion down his throat, till his stomach was so much offended that he was compelled to start up of a sudden; and, in the hurry of his elevation, overturned his plate into the bosom of the baron. The emergency of his occasions would not permit him to stay and make apologies for this abrupt behaviour; so that he flew into another apartment, where Pickle found him puking, and crossing himself with great devotion; and a chair, at his desire, being brought to the door, he slipped into it, more dead than alive … When our hero returned to the dining-room … the places were filled with two pies, one of dormice liquored with syrup of white poppies which the doctor had substituted in the room of toasted poppy-seed, formerly eaten with honey, as a dessert; and the other composed of a hock of pork baked in honey.