This content explores ancient Roman culinary extravagance, focusing on a historical recipe for roast pig stuffed with honey and "tracta" (dried dough), and contrasting it with the ostentatious, fictional feast of Trimalchio from Petronius's Satyricon.
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If you wanted to play the big shot, el jefe, at a dinner party what would you serve?
Champagne, caviar, lobster perhaps?
Well not an ancient Rome. You got to think more along the lines of honeyed dormouse,
or flamingo tongue, sow's womb even, or perhaps
a roast pig stuffed with honey and tracta.
And that is exactly what we're making today. We'll also take a look at one of Rome's most infamous,
if fictional, culinary show-offs as we take a seat at Trimalchio's feast.
This time on Tasting History.
We are in week three of Rome Month sponsored by Total War
Rome Remastered coming out April 29th. It is a history-based strategy game
that I looooved playing in college now remastered in all its glory.
And just as Rome Remastered is played on epic imperial proportions,
so is today's dish eaten on epic imperial proportions.
From the Apicius 'De re coquinaria.'
Porcellum Assum Tractomelinum - roast pig stuffed with tracta and honey.
Gut the clean pig through the neck, then dry.
Grind one ounce pepper, honey, wine, bring to a simmer.
Crumble dried tracta and mix with the ingredients in the pot.
Stir with a sprig of fresh laurel, then cook until smooth and thick.
Stuff the piglet with the mixture, tie up, set in an oven,
arrange and serve. So you should feel free to tone this one down using a pork loin or
some pork chops, but if you want to go whole hog what you'll need is:
one suckling pig, one ounce or 28 grams of pepper.
Now I can just hear you scoffing.
"Tut tut. Surely a Roman ounce and a US ounce are not the same thing
Max. You have not thought this through tut tut."
But to paraphrase Salt-N-Pepa let's talk about weights and measures.
See a Roman pound and a US pound are quite different.
The Roman pound or libra which is actually why we still use lb to abbreviate pound
was about 3/4 of a US pound but a US pound is 16 ounces while a Roman pound is 12 ounces.
So do a little fancy math and you will find out that there are 0.967 Roman ounces to a US ounce.
Basically the same for all intents and purposes.
Now what I do think is kind of weird is how specific
the recipe is in the amount of pepper, one ounce of pepper,
but does not give specifics for any other ingredient. It's really quite aggravating but
for my recipe I'm going to be using: one cup honey, 2 cups or 473 milliliters of wine,
I'm using white wine but you can use whatever you want. Two leaves of fresh laurel or bay.
I actually couldn't find a bay tree anywhere. I did order one but it's like this big and so
it's going to take months to grow enough to actually get anything off of it.
So I did find fresh bay leaves but it's not a sprig, it's just the leaves.
So I'm using two. And a bunch of tracta.
Now what is tracta? Well it's sheets of dried dough made of unspecified groats,
flour and water, and Cato the elder has a recipe that i'm going to follow,
but there are actually kind of different variations depending on what groats and what
flour you use. So I'm going to be making one version today and another version next week,
because I'll have to use it again for next week's recipe.
But this week we'll need three cups or 500 grams of coarse grain semolina,
and three cups or 500 grams of fine ground durum flour,
plus some water for soaking the groats. Now let's make our tracta.
Put your semolina or the groats into a bowl and cover with water
and then let them sit for about an hour. They should soak up most of the water
but if there's a lot left over pour that off and then start adding in your flour.
You can add more water if needed but this should be a very dry dough so don't overdo it.
Once all the flour has been worked in knead it until you have a nice smooth dough. Then take
off pieces and roll them out very thin. Now we are making a lot i mean a tract of tracta
so it's going to take up a lot of space once it's all rolled out, but it needs to
sit out for about a day to completely dry. You can also put it in a very, very low oven and it will
dry a little bit faster but don't cook it. Just let it dry out. Once the tract is dry
break it up into a bowl this is going to basically be like bread crumbs in a stuffing.
Then grind your pepper and add it to a large pot with the wine and the honey.
Then mix everything together and set it over a medium heat
until it's simmering. Then slowly add in the crumbled tracta and stir it in until smooth.
Smooth is a relative term. I don't know how smooth they got it,
because if they wanted it super smooth then why wouldn't you just use flour.
If you're using the ground tracta there's going to be some pieces left to it but it
will kind of become a homogenous clump. Then add your bay leaves or stir in a sprig of laurel
and leave it to cook for about five minutes.
And while that cooks set your oven to 300 degrees Fahrenheit
or 150 celsius and get out your nice clean pig. Once the stuffing is ready stuff it into the pig
and sew him up. Then set in the oven cooking for about 15 minutes a pound.
You can also put a little bit of olive oil on him just to give him a nice sheen and
darken him up a bit. Now while he roasts and I toast hit that Like button and Subscribe
as we sit down to that most infamous feast from the Satyricon,
a dinner which boasts dishes that might put our poor pig to shame.
To the Satyricon! Part satire, part adventure
part drama and part adult erotica quite the literary smorgasbord.
It's thought to have been written by Gaius Petronius an aristocrat and
courtier to the Emperor Nero in the first century.
That's what makes him classy.
Oh he was the epitome of class. He actually advised the emperor on his daily outfit.
And Tacitus, Plutarch and Pliny of the Elder all credit him arbiter
elegantiyarum, judge of elegance. The Tim Gunn of ancient Rome.
When did you go Grecian on us?
"He was a man whose day was passed in sleep, his nights in the social duties and amenities of life:
while the industry of others may rise one to greatness Petronius had idled into fame.
Nor was he regarded, like the common crowd of spendthrifts, as a debauchee and wastrel,
but has the finished artist of extravagance."
So basically if you were poor and spent your days sleeping in your night's partying you were lazy
and debauched but if you were rich and did the exact same thing you were merely extravagant,
and as someone who considered himself luxuriously extravagant due to his high status
Petronius did not care for those beneath him especially
when they tried to work their way up the ladder to meet him.
And he used parts of the Satyricon as an indictment of these Roman social climbers,
and none was more infamous than the character of Trimalchio.
Trimalchio was a former slave who bought his freedom and then speculating in the
grain market had become extraordinarily wealthy.
Just the kind of person that Petronius would detest but while Eliza Doolittle had Henry Higgins
to teach her that entering high society required more than just wealth
it required class Trimalchio had no such tutor.
He is portrayed as a boorish lout who wallows in his new money and back then
before lambos and Berkins became a thing the way to show off your money was with food.
So the main character of the Satyricon an educated and well-pedigreed man named
Encolpius goes to Trimalchio's villa for a feast. He is completely taken aback
by the murals on the wall which are all of Trimalchio showing how he made his wealth.
Not classy at all. Declassé
Then Encolpius notes some of the foods set out for the guests.
"On the tray stood a donkey made of corinthian bronze, bearing panniers containing olives,
white in one and black in the other.
Two platters flank the figure on the margins of which
were engraved Trimalchios' name and the weight of the silver in each.
Dormice sprinkled with poppy seed and honey were served on little bridges
soldered fast to the platter, and hot sausages on a silver gridiron
underneath which were dams in plums and pomegranate seeds."
And by the way Apicius where our recipe for today comes from
has another recipe for dormice and one of these days if I can find dormice maybe i'll make them,
and maybe I won't. Then Encolpius takes his place on one of the couches.
In ancient Rome you would lie on sofas at a big feast while you dined,
which probably require a lot of Tums if I went because i have
terrible heartburn when i lie down after eating.
"At length we reclined, and slave boys from Alexandria
poured water cooled with snow upon our hands,
while others following, attended to our feet and removed the hangnails with wonderful dexterity,
nor were they silent even during this disagreeable operation,
but they all kept singing at their work."
A pedicure at a dinner party distastefully extravagant but not something I would turn down.
Finally after keeping his guests waiting, rude then just as it is now,
Trimalchio enters. He is carried in surrounded in a nest of cushions and he's showing off his rings,
and his gold and ivory arm bracelets as he picks his teeth with a silver quill. "Friends,
it was not convenient for me to come into the dining-room just yet,
but for fear my absence should cause you any inconvenience I gave over my own pleasure..."
though gracing him with his presence he still continues to ignore them
as he finishes up a game of dice.
"Trimalchio snapped his fingers;
the eunuch hearing the signal held the chamber pot for him while he continued playing.
After relieving his bladder he called for water to wash his hands, barely moistened his fingers,
and dried them on a boy's head."
Charming,
but now that he's there the feast can begin and the foods that are served are extravagant,
even for an ancient Roman feast.
Peahen eggs made of pastry that when opened
"Contained a fine fat fig-pecker embedded in a yolk seasoned with pepper."
He showed off his wealth by doing things like sending to India for his mushrooms,
and "...if you asked for hens milk you would get it Hens don't make milk...
A huge roast pig is brought out and when his belly is sliced open
sausages and meat puddings come tumbling out and then bottles of hundred-year-old wine come out
and Trimalchio cries "Ah me! To think wine lives longer than poor little man...
I offered no such vintage yesterday, though my guests were far more respectable."
I think we all know someone like this guy. He's very well written.
Now he wasn't right to mention it because that's just rude,
but he was right to care because it was all about who was invited where and who showed up.
That is how you measured success.
Even the layout of where you sat on the couches mattered. It was all about status
but it was an implied status symbol not something you actually mentioned.
That's well- that's just not classy.
Though classy or no, there is one dish or rather 12 dishes
that I would have loved to have seen from Trimalchio's feast.
Basically it was a giant platter with the 12 zodiac symbols and an adjoining dish for each.
"Ram's vetches on Aries, a piece of beef on Taurus...,
the womb of an unfarrowed sow on Virgo... a bull's eye on Sagittarius."
Get it? A bullseye on Sagittarius who was an archer, it's kind of clever even if not
very appetizing. Now while all of this seems rather over the top it is nothing
in comparison with most of the rest of the Satyricon
because as I said while it is a satire and part drama and adventure
there's a lot of erotic material in it that would really make anyone including myself blush.
For example, the main character's name and Encolpius literally means crotch
and he has quite the voracious appetite for all things carnal but also has a problem
with impotence and this is one of the tamer things in the- in the book or in the work.
Not really going to go into all of the other things right now, it's not the place, however
I am going to link to an episode of one of my favorite podcasts Literature and History,
where the host goes through the Satyricon and talks about all of those wonderful
little parts that will make you blush. Now before we finish our own dish fit for
a Tremolchian feast take a look at this tasty little treat from Total War Rome Remastered.
So you'll know that your pig is done roasting when he reaches about 170 Fahrenheit
or 76 Celsius when a thermometer is stuck on the inside.
Then set him out to rest for about 10 or 15 minutes and he's ready to carve
my roast. Stuffed pig fit for my own personal feast of Trimaxio.
I'm actually really, really excited about this skin.
It's actually my favorite part of any roast pig. So crispy.
And tear it off with my teeth. It's wonderful. It smells so good. Ah and it cuts so prettily
iIm gonna try the stuffing first. Hmm.
Hmm!
That's um..
that's peppery.
But it's also sweet. Really like sweet and spicy.
Super peppery. So I'm curious because it took time for pepper to get to to Rome from the East but I
leave my pepper to to sit for months and months so I can still kind of use the same amounts.
I'm curious if it wasn't quite as strong because it's very, very peppery but
it's also really really good because it has that honey there to sweeten it up.
The texture is odd.
It's very chewy. It's not like bread stuffing at all, and I'm curious-
I'm curious if this is how it was. You know the recipe is only so specific so
you can't really know but it's good. It's just the the texture I- I- It's not what I would go for.
Now the pork just fell off the bone. It- it's oh looks so good.
Mhm :)
It's amazing. It's so moist and it gets a little bit of the flavor of the stuffing but not a lot.
It's fairly pork flavored but that's what I like. I just like a roast pig you know.
Get a roast pig. It tastes really good, and speaking of roast pig I have a wonderful little
quote that I want to share from Macrobius, one of my favorite ancient Roman authors where he is
talking about a roast pig that could have totally been served at Trimalchio's feast but it wasn't.
"How disgusting just to list the sorts of food!
Indeed, Titus, in his speech supporting the laws of Fannius,
reproaches his contemporaries for serving Trojan pig, so-called because it is "pregnant" with other
animals enclosed within, just as the famous Trojan horse was "pregnant with armed men."
Definitely an Instagram-worthy dish which you should probably follow me on Instagram:
tastinghistorywithmaxmiller even though I'm probably not going to be making the Trojan pig.
Now next week we are going to be making an early Roman cheesecake called wait for it-
placenta or placenta or placenta depending on which version of
Latin pronunciation you want to follow.
I'll actually talk a little bit about that next week probably.
So join me next week for dessert as we wrap up Rome month here on Tasting History.
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