Tasting the Past: Recipes from Antiquity E-Book

Jacqui Wood

• Herausgeber: The History Press
• Kategorie: Lebensstil
• Serie: Tasting the Past
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 111

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020

Beschreibung

The many influences of the past on our diet today make the concept of 'British food' very hard to define. The Celts, Romans, Saxons, Vikings and Normans all brought ingredients to the table, and the country was introduced to all manner of spices after the Crusades. The Georgians enjoyed a new level of excess and then, of course, the world wars forced us into the challenge of making meals from very little. The history of cooking in Britain is as tumultuous as the times its people have lived through. Tasting the Past: Recipes from Antiquity documents the rich history of our food, its fads and its fashions to be combined with a practical cookbook of over 120 recipes from the eras of the Iron Age Celts and the Romans. Jacqui Wood guides us through the nutritious and pragmatic recipes of the Celts, who harvested the ingredients readily available around them; and the far more elaborate tastes of the Romans, who had an empire of imports to supplement and spice up their continentally curated diet.

Leseprobe

Tasting the Past

Tasting the Past

Recipes from Antiquity

JACQUI WOOD

Cover Illustrations: Utro_na_more/iStockphoto

First published 2009, as part of Tasting the Past: Recipes from the Stone Age to the Present, and 2001, as part of Prehistoric Cooking

This edition published 2020

The History Press

97 St George’s Place, Cheltenham,

Gloucestershire, GL50 3QB

www.thehistorypress.co.uk

© Jacqui Wood, 2001, 2009, 2020

The right of Jacqui Wood to be identified as the Author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without the permission in writing from the Publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978 0 7509 9459 0

Typesetting and origination by The History Press

Printed and bound in Great Britain by TJ International Ltd.

eBook converted by Geethik Technologies

Contents

Introduction

The Celts

Prehistoric Solstice Feast

The Romans

The First Christmas Feasts

Basic Conversion Chart

Bibliography

BRITISH FOOD HAS been hard to categorise in the past compared to the very distinctive cuisines of countries such as Italy, France and Germany. This is because it is an amalgamation of all of them, in the same way that the English language is a combination of five European languages: Celtic, Latin, Saxon, Viking and Norman. Our cuisine, too, is a combination of the typical foods of those that once conquered Britain over a thousand years ago.

But Britain’s assimilation of the foods of other cultures did not stop after the Norman Conquest. During the medieval period, the spices brought from the Crusades by the Normans were used in almost every dish by those who could afford them. When Britain itself began to have colonies, the culinary embellishments to our diet began again. During the Elizabethan period, strange produce coming from the New World was adopted with relish by our forebears.

The Civil War period introduced Puritan restrictions to our daily fare, making it against the law to eat a mince pie on Christmas Day because it was thought a decadent Papist tradition. The Georgians took on chocolate and coffee with gusto and even moulded their business transactions around the partaking of such beverages. But it was really not until the Victorian period – when it was said that the sun never set on the British Empire – that our diet became truly global in nature.

This book will hopefully become a manual for those readers who want to put on a themed dinner party, providing a wide selection of recipes from each period in history. I have not included those recipes that I feel you would never want to make, but instead have focused on dishes that will allow you to experience what it was really like to eat during those particular periods. No one, apart from the truly adventurous among you, is going to acquire a cow’s udder from the butcher and stuff it as they did in the medieval period, or stuff a fish’s stomach with chopped cod’s liver!

Each chapter will begin with a brief introduction to the foods of the period that I found particularly fascinating during my research, and will end with the traditional festive food of the period. If you want to celebrate your Christmas in a completely different way, why not try a pagan Celtic spread or a Roman feast?

IF I HAD to sum up one item of food that really says ‘Celtic’, it would have to be bacon or ham. The first Celtic society in Europe came from the Hallstatt region of Austria, where the famous salt mines are today. These people were in fact salt miners, and when archaeologists came across their remains in the labyrinth of tunnels in the Hallstatt mountains, they were well preserved due to the salt surrounding them. The Romans even commented on the fine quality of their salt pork and salt lamb, which were sold at the time in the markets as far south as Rome. So if you want to make yourself a quick and tasty authentic Celtic breakfast, make yourself a bacon sandwich with butter on brown bread and you are eating a bit of Celtic history!

On the whole, Celtic food was simple and unadulterated, with lots of meat, fish, bread and butter and chunks of cheese. Their main vegetable crops were beans and peas, and the rest of their vegetables they still gathered from the surrounding countryside and seashore. Vegetables were primarily leaves and stems, as the root vegetables we know today only arrived in Britain at the time of the Roman Conquest.

I devised the recipes below from a variety of sources from the archaeological record. Until I wrote my book Prehistoric Cooking, no one had attempted to try and discover what recipes our prehistoric forbears might have used. There was a school of thought arguing that, unless you found the actual residue of a particular meal in a pot, then you could not say categorically that our ancestors ate it. I, however, approached the subject in a different way. If we watch a TV documentary about an Amazonian tribe, we all assume that if there were tasty plants near them in the forest they would have known about them and eaten them. So I did not see why our ancestors should have been any different. I started to look at the pollen record around prehistoric settlements and, if the plants were tasty, then I put them in my recipes. I also looked at some lesser-known cooking techniques such as clay baking and water pit cooking.

There are also some lesser-known quotes by classical historians about the Celtic diet that add to this picture. One might assume that if you are going back as far as the Celtic period, something as basic as bread might be a bit hard and chewy, but this was not the case, as a quotation from the Roman historian Pliny illustrates:

When the corn of Gaul and Spain of the kinds we have stated is steeped to make beer the foam that forms on the surface in the process is for leaven, in consequence of which those races have a lighter kind of bread than others.

He is clearly talking about yeasted bread, which we tend to think was not eaten until much later. On the whole, the Celtic diet was varied, healthy and very tasty. One year I was doing a lot of cookery demonstrations and I found it impossible to weed my vegetable patch, as the weeds that grew around my vegetables were more valuable to me for cooking than the vegetables themselves! Here is a selection of recipes for you to try.

Lamb Boiled with Green Grass

This is the way people in prehistoric times cooked their meat in water pits. They covered the joint of meat, in this case a leg of lamb, in fresh green grass and tied it with string. Then they put it into a water pit and added hot stones to simmer for an hour or two until it was cooked. The grass not only protected the meat from the ash and stone grit in the trough, but also added flavour to it. Once cooked, the meat was taken out of its grass wrapping and crisped by the fire. This can be done in a modern kitchen by wrapping a leg of lamb in green grass and boiling it in a pot on the stove. When it is cooked, take it out of the grass and crisp it in the oven. You will never taste more delicious lamb than one that is cooked in this way. The grass seems to bring out its real flavour.

Dried Peas with Mint and Cream

225 g whole dried peas

25 g butter

A large bunch of chives

2 sprigs of mint

½ cup of cream

Salt to taste

Method

1. Soak the peas overnight in cold water.

2. Drain and cover with water and simmer until they are soft.

3. Drain the peas then put in a dish by the fire to keep warm.

4. Melt the butter in a pan and fry the chopped chives for a minute.

5. Add this to the cooked peas with the chopped mint and cream.

6. Season to taste.

Although quite simple, this is a delicious accompaniment to roast meat.

Leftover Pea Fritters

If any of the prior pea mixture is left over, it can be made into a nutritious fritter.

1. Add an egg to the peas and enough flour to bind it.

2. Shape into small cakes and roll into a mixture of finely chopped hazelnuts and flour.

3. Brown these cakes on a hot griddle.

These pea and nut fritters can be eaten hot or cold and are very good taken on long walks for a savoury snack.

Pease Pudding

This is a very traditional way to cook dried peas and can be well-suited to cooking in a water pit. Soak peas in water overnight and drain. Cook in fresh water with a few sprigs of thyme. Fry some sorrel (Rumes Acetosella) and chives, or any combination of wild vegetables, in some butter until soft. Mix with the cooked pea mixture and add an egg to bind, then put the mixture in a cloth that has been greased with butter and floured. Tie the cloth together tightly and drop into a water pit with the cooking meat. It will then absorb some of the meat stock from the pit-cooking process. Alternatively, it can be steamed: Try putting a simple wicker tray over a pot or cauldron of water. Put the pudding on top of this, place a large ceramic bowl over the pudding and set over a fire. This is a very simple and effective steamer that could also be used to cook fish.

Peas and Apple

Follow the prior recipe but instead of sorrel and chives fried in butter, use chives and chopped crab or cooking apples. This is an unusual combination but I think it’s very tasty.

Beans and Carraway

These are like the modern broad bean (Vicia faba) but smaller and with a much thicker outer skin. In Britain these beans are called the ‘tic bean’ or ‘British field bean’ and, due to the thick skin, are now mainly cultivated for animal feed. This type of bean has been found throughout Iron Age Europe from Biskupin in Poland to Britain — hence the name ‘Celtic Bean’. This bean needs overnight soaking and then boiling in fresh unsalted water for at least three hours. It then has to be processed to destroy the thick outer skin. I find the best way to do this is to grind them between two stones, as one might grind grain. Use a food processor if you do not have the time or inclination to be totally authentic. Borlotti beans are the closest modern equivalent found in stores.

This is my favourite way to eat Celtic beans.

1 kg cooked processed beans or Borlotti beans

25 g butter

A big bunch of sorrel

A big bunch of chives

1 ramson bulb (Allium ursinum) or two cloves of garlic

1 dessert spoon of caraway seeds

Method

1. Fry the chopped sorrel, chives and ramson in the butter until soft.

2. Add the caraway seeds and the processed or Borlotti beans and salt.

3. Mix well and add a cup of water.

4. Cook gently over the fire until the water is absorbed.

Bean and Bacon Stew

250 g fatty bacon

2 sticks of celery

A bowl of pignuts (or use chopped parsnips)

2 leeks

250 g mushrooms

2 tsp mustard seeds

A sprig of thyme

500 g Borlotti beans

Method

1. Fry the chopped bacon until crisp and the fat comes out.

2. Chop and fry the celery, leeks and pignuts/parsnip until soft.

3. Add the chopped mushrooms, mustard seeds and thyme and stir well.

4. Add the Borlotti beans, two cups of water and a spoonful of salt.

5. Cook slowly for 1 hour until all the flavours have combined.

6. Serve with chunks of rye bread and butter.

Savoury Bean Fritters

These are made with the tinned Borlotti beans that you can find in any super market today; they are the nearest easily available alternative to the British field bean that the Celts used to grow. The skins are tough, though, so once drained, mash them with a fork before using. This is a great high-protein portable food, a savoury snack for those long winter walks and children love them.

125 g butter

A bunch of sorrel

125 g chopped hazelnuts

A bunch of sea beet (Beta vularis) or fat hen (Chenopodium album) – spinach will do if you can’t get these.

1 tbsp grated horseradish

500 g Borlotti beans (mashed with a fork)

1 egg

Salt to taste

Flour to mix

Method

1. Fry the sorrel in butter with the hazelnuts and sea beet, then add the grated horseradish and the beans.

2. Add the egg and salt and enough flour to make a stiff mixture.

3. Shape into rissoles and fry in more butter until brown. These are good hot or cold.

Lentils and Fat Hen or Sea Beet

125 g lentils

2 leeks

A good bunch of fat hen or sea beet leaves

25 g butter

1 tsp mustard seeds

1 litre water

3 tsbp wine vinegar

Salt to taste

Method

1. Wash the lentils, soak them for a few hours and drain.

2.