[Sca-cooks] roman feast / Apicius

Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius adamantius1 at verizon.net
Sat Mar 22 20:14:34 PDT 2008


On Mar 22, 2008, at 8:30 PM, ranvaig at columbus.rr.com wrote:
> While we are talking about Roman food, I made a list of foods  
> mentioned in  _Cooking Apicus_ by Sally Granger and and the Grocock/  
> Grainger translation of _Apicus_.   See the books for more info.
>
> It was a fast compilation and probably has errors and omissions, but  
> I'll post it, in case anyone might find it useful.   Please feel  
> free to post corrections.

You might take a look and see if there's lentils in them thar hills.  
They may not be in "Cooking Apicius", but I'm pretty sure they're in  
Apicius.

Tracta appear to be a primitive dried pasta, like dry lasagne, made  
from soaked, kneaded spelt (is it spelt or emmer? The soft one, not  
the hard one). The idea was to soak the grain until soft enough to  
knead directly into a dough without having to grind it into flour  
first. Because it was low in gluten, the result was probably pretty  
delicate. It could be crumbled into boiling liquids to thicken them,  
or used to line the bottom of a cake, or be placed between layers of  
other foods to add a "stacked" or layered structure to the dish (like  
the wafers in Chiquart's Parma Pies). I STR there's a pretty detailed  
description of how tracta are made and used in Cato's De Agricultura.

Adamantius

"Most men worry about their own bellies, and other people's souls,  
when we all ought to worry about our own souls, and other people's  
bellies."
			-- Rabbi Israel Salanter




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