A Roman Dinner – At the Table with Apicius

In food, the sauce does more than add salt. Broken-down fish proteins contribute body and umami, a modern word for a taste effect that ancient cooks could exploit without describing its biochemistry. A small amount can round out a vegetable dish or make a fruit sauce less one-dimensional, without immediately making the diner think of fish.

For Swedish home cooks, Thai or Vietnamese fish sauce made from anchovies and salt is a practical substitute. It is not identical to every Roman product, but it serves a similar purpose. Look for one with a short ingredient list. Italian colatura di alici is another option, though it too should not be presented as an unchanged ancient original.

The quantity is crucial. The most common pitfall is trying to make history tangible by overdoing its most famous ingredient. In a delicate pear patina, the fish sauce should provide a quiet backbone, not dominate with the aroma of an open bottle. Taste the fruit mixture before adding the eggs, and use ordinary salt only if it is genuinely needed.

Homemade fish sauce requires knowledge of safe fermentation and handling. For this dinner, a commercially made product is the sensible choice. The interest of the reconstruction lies in the meeting of flavours, not in improvising a fish-processing facility on the kitchen counter.

Patina can refer both to a vessel and to the food cooked in it. In Apicius, we encounter patinas with very different contents. Some resemble egg dishes or puddings, but the word does not correspond exactly to our omelette, gratin or pie. They have more in common in their form and cooking method than in any particular main ingredient.

The pear patina appears in the collection’s fourth book. Pears are cooked and worked into a mixture with pepper, cumin, honey, passum, liquamen and a little oil. Eggs bind the dish, and pepper also features in the finish. The source thus provides a clear pattern of flavours, even if it does not supply a complete modern recipe.

Passum was a sweet wine made with dried grapes. It should be distinguished from other grape products used in ancient cooking, including reduced grape must. A modern passito can be a useful counterpart in the kitchen, but grape varieties, production methods and final flavours vary. Our recipe uses white grape juice as a readily available alcohol-free alternative. This is a deliberate departure, not a claim of equivalence with the ancient ingredient.

The pears also affect the result. A firm, unripe pear needs more time and may produce a grainier purée. A very ripe pear softens quickly but can release plenty of liquid. Texture therefore matters more than following a precise number of minutes: the fruit should be soft enough to mash, and the purée thick enough not to dilute the egg mixture too much.

Cumin, not caraway, provides the warm earthiness. Pepper adds a drier bite. Both move the dish beyond the usual dessert flavours. The honey should lift the pear flavour, not turn the whole thing into confectionery. Olive oil adds fat and brings the flavours together, but a very bitter oil can take over.

The ancient directions should not be read as precise instructions for our electric ovens. Roman cooks could work with embers, vessels, lids and various forms of indirect heat. Here, we use a low oven temperature and a water bath instead. This gives control over the setting of the eggs and reduces the risk of a dry, spongy edge around a still-runny centre.

The result is a soft, spoonable dish rather than a firm pie. Serve it warm, not hot, in small portions. At a modern dinner, it could make a surprising intermediate course or a gently sweet finale. That placement is ours, not something that can be confidently inferred from the recipe’s position in the cookbook.

The very first recipe in the Apicius collection is conditum paradoxum, a lavish spiced wine. Its name is generally rendered as something like a wondrous or remarkable spiced wine. Its position offers an enticing opening: before the food arrives, a drink that shows what the household’s stores and expertise can achieve.

The recipe is unusually detailed compared with many of the food dishes. Honey and some of the wine are heated, foam is dealt with, spices are added and the mixture is diluted with more wine. It includes pepper, saffron, mastic, an aromatic leaf spice, dates and roasted date stones. The drink then undergoes further treatment, including clarification with charcoal.

Not every detail translates easily to a Swedish shop shelf. Mastic is an aromatic resin still used in eastern Mediterranean cooking. The Latin term for the leaf requires interpretation and is associated in translations with, for example, malabathrum, an aromatic commodity traded from Asia. Replacing it with an ordinary bay leaf without comment would give a false impression of certainty.

Our version retains wine, honey, pepper, saffron and dates. Mastic, the leaf spice, the stones and charcoal clarification are omitted. This simplifies the recipe and avoids questionable improvisation with ingredients not sold for that purpose. The amount of honey is also reduced considerably compared with the source’s proportions. The drink is therefore a source-based adaptation, not an exact copy.

Ancient measures must be treated with the same openness. Roman weights and volumes can be given approximate modern equivalents, but conversion does not resolve questions about the honey’s properties, the wine’s strength or the spices’ intensity. Calculating numerous decimal places would make the recipe seem falsely precise. Tasting and clearly stated choices are more honest here.

Wine was often mixed with water in Greek and Roman dining contexts, but strength and proportions varied. The spiced wine can therefore be served in small glasses and diluted to taste. It should not be called Roman glögg without qualification: the shared use of honey and spices is real, but neither the modern Christmas tradition nor serving it hot follows automatically from the ancient text.

The alcohol-free version is based on white grape juice and water, with less honey and a little lemon for balance. It is a contemporary alternative with the same aromatic idea, not a documented Roman drink. The alcoholic version remains alcoholic after its brief heating; heat does not turn wine into a safe alcohol-free choice.

There is no unbroken, uniform tradition in which people today eat exactly as in Apicius. Several ingredients and technical ideas do, however, live on in Mediterranean kitchens: olive oil, wine, pulses, processed fish products and an attention to sweet–sour balance. Similarities are interesting, but they do not prove that a modern recipe descends directly from an ancient one.

Cooking Roman food today is therefore about encounters between text and practice. A translator must decide what a word means. A food historian weighs the text against other evidence. A cook must finally decide how much pepper actually goes into the bowl. None of these tasks replaces the others.

For a dinner at home, it is wiser to choose a few distinctive flavours than to pile every known Roman luxury onto the same table. Bread, olives, boiled lentils with herbs and a simple vegetable dish can frame the pear patina. The result is a Roman-inspired table, not a documented menu from a particular house.

Make the spiced drink the day before, if you like, and bake the patina close to serving time. Set out small glasses, water and an alcohol-free option on an equal footing. Explain that the fish sauce is there, both for anyone with allergies and because the surprise of the flavour becomes more interesting when it can be understood.

You do not need reclining couches. The most rewarding legacy of this cooking is, rather, its attention to combinations: how a little saltiness can give fruit a longer finish, how pepper can make honey feel less heavy, and how a simple egg mixture can carry several worlds of flavour at once. There, between the mortar and the first spoonful, the old text becomes food again.