[Sca-cooks] Apicius' Patina de piris

[johnna holloway]

I finally got around to looking this up.
There's a modernized recipe in Giascosa' A Taste of Ancient
Rome. She has one puree the cooked pears and spices and mix with
3 eggs. She recommends that one omit the garum and there is
section on why she advocates doing this earlier in the book.
Pour into a casserole and bake for 20 minutes at 350 degrees.
I wonder if the choice of the pears wouldn't make a difference here.

What would happen if you took a pear of each of several varieties and
made
a number of versions into say small servings so that they could all
be tasted at one time? One could also vary a couple with garum left out
and such too. Might be an interesting taste test.

Johnnae llyn Lewis  Johnna Holloway


  In my local cooking "guild" several people have tried to make Patina
> >>  de Piris in Apicius. So far everyone has thought it smelled, looked,
> >>  and tasted unpleasant, and had an unpleasant mouth feel.> >>
> >>  Also the recipe doesn't say what to do after one adds the eggs - are
> >>  they cooked like an omelette, baked in the oven, or stirred in like a
> >>  sauce?> >>
> >>  Has anyone here had success with this dish? And if yes, what are your
> >  > suggestions for success?
>
> "Boil and core pears, pound with pepper, cumin, honey, passum,
> liquamen, and a little oil. Add eggs to make a patina mixture,
> sprinkle with pepper, and serve."

"Phil Troy/ G. Tacitus Adamantius" wrote:>
> I've never made the dish, but it seems reasonably straightforward. If
> you're having textural problems, it may be either that you simply
> don't like the dish the way it was originally intended, or maybe the
> pears need to be cooked longer, or perhaps a different variety than
> you're using is what was intended.
>
> For seasonings, I would be aggressive with pepper, less so with
> cumin, a little heavy with the honey and passum (which is one of
> those sweet wine syrups, but I forget which one), and as for
> liquamen, it's surprisingly pleasant in dishes where you would expect
> it to be awful. Just remember it is, in part, used in lieu of salt in
> Roman cooking; that should be a guide; think of the little pinch of
> salt you might put in pumpkin pie filling.
>
> You might try cooking it in a bain-marie, or maybe an improvised one
> made, say, from a large, deep skillet with some hot water, with a
> smaller casserole dish set in it; the water should come pretty high
> up the sides, but not high enough to slosh in if the water boils.
>
> HTH,
>
> Adamantius