Guido Sala works as a food scientist at Wageningen University. In his spare time he studied history, and then obtained his PhD on a very mundane aspect of life in Rome during the Roman Empire: food supplies and eating habits among the different layers of the Roman population. What did they eat? And: did they eat a varied diet?
Sala bases his work on texts from that time and on archaeological material: analyzes of food remains, feces and bones. On this basis he made an estimate of the daily diet of the poorest, the common man, the middle class and the elite. These ‘food parcels’ represent an economic value that you can more or less calculate, and the outcome says something about the size of the Roman economy. Sala concludes: “They ate better and more varied food than is commonly thought.”
What did the common man in Rome eat?
“Stewed vegetables, stewed meat. And when you think of meat, you should think of pork. They also ate a lot of grain in the form of porridge and bread. Porridge, made with water, milk or stock. And different varieties of bread, made with yeast, so airy, actually not that different from our white and whole wheat bread.
“It was part of bread companaticum, that’s everything you can eat with bread: stewed vegetables and stewed meat, but also cheese, bacon, ham and olive oil. Olive oil was often spread on bread, and you also used it in sauces and when baking. Lard was used for frying: pork fat. And wine was drunk with everything.”
Wine was an important food?
“Wine is originally a way to retain the calories of grapes. One liter of wine contains 700 to 800 kcal. That is more than a quarter of what you need per day.”
One liter of wine a day seems like a lot to me.
“Maybe for us. You have to look at it this way, they drank wine like we drink coffee or tea. The whole day long. This was then diluted with water: usually one part water to one part wine. The concept of ‘wine’ should be interpreted broadly here. If you leave wine to stand, it will first become sour wine, and then vinegar. The entire range, from wine to wine vinegar, was all consumed. Nothing was thrown away. And in addition to the wine from the first pressing of the grapes, which mainly went to the wealthy Romans, a type of wine was also made from what was left of the grapes. So wine from the second pressing. It went to the common man, and to the slaves and soldiers. It contained less sugar, less alcohol, fewer calories.”
Romans also drank vinegar?
“Yes, of course diluted with water. One part vinegar to nine parts water. In the south of Italy it is still customary to drink water with vinegar, very refreshing. That is not the vinegar that you now buy for one euro in the supermarket. No, that’s nice vinegar.
“In addition, a lot of boiled grape juice was used in Roman cuisine. In sauces, but also for storing cheese, which gave the cheese a special sweet taste. A well-known fact in food technology: anything you store in a sugary syrup can be kept for a longer period of time. The bacteria cannot grow in there.”
And then of course there was garum.
“The condiment par excellence. Fermented fish sauce. You made that by fermenting fish in the sun, a kind of rotting process, but more or less controlled. Because you added salt so that not all bacteria could grow in it. After a while, the liquid that seeped from it was collected and used as a seasoning.
“Sauces always contained olive oil and almost always garum. And almost all dressings also contained garum. Sometimes it was combined with honey, because honey was also used a lot in Roman cuisine. And whatever solids remained from the fish were also used. Some kind of pasta. That was called allec.”
Meat was almost always pork?
“Perhaps one of the reasons for the success of Christianity in Rome is that Christians did not adopt the Jews’ aversion to the pig. Had they done so, Christianity would have become less popular.
“They hardly ate beef, because cattle were working animals at that time. And sheep and goats were mainly there for dairy: milk and cheese. Everything from the pig was eaten, including all the innards. For the common man this was the stomach and intestines. For the rich, these were the more exclusive parts, such as the uterus and vagina.
“What exactly people ate depended on their income, of course. As you earned more, you ate less wheat, meaning less bread and porridge, and more meat, fish, eggs and nuts. And more fat and sugar. And the wine you drank was better and more nutritious.”
Why is it that when people are rich, they suddenly want to eat completely different things?
“Boredom perhaps? Or just status: conspicuous consumption. And maybe, in addition, just an interest in food. The Romans were fairly open-minded in terms of culture and such. They absorbed everything that came from outside, such as the philosophy and literature of the Greeks. And they also found Egypt fascinating. So they also readily adopted culinary traditions and ingredients. They adopted the lemon from Asia. The pomegranate from Carthage. They hardly knew rice: it was very exclusive, very expensive, and had to come all the way from India.
“They ate quite a few plants and animals that we no longer eat. Sorrel, mallow, nettle, white dead nettle, cross thistle, grape hyacinth, cardoon. The leaves of the dandelion. The young stem tips of pumpkins were eaten like asparagus. And they also ate, for example, the roots of caraway.
“And all kinds of birds. Thrush, sparrow, ortolan bunting, peacock, coot… The tongue and brains of some birds, such as the flamingo and the crane, were considered very exclusive. Acorn mice and dormice were kept, fattened and then roasted, sprinkled with poppy seeds and dipped in honey, a real delicacy.
“Donkey meat was fashionable for a while. And beavers and storks were also sometimes on the menu. Eating those two animals was later banned by a pope in the early Middle Ages.”
Did the Romans also have ideas about healthy eating?
“Especially about frugal eating. After a banquet they liked to take it easy for a day. Then they ate bread and cabbage. Cato even wrote an ode to cabbage. Cabbage is said to be good for all kinds of ailments. Stewed cabbage, bread, a glass of wine, and maybe a piece of cheese: that was seen as a frugal evening meal.”