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Roman Cuisine
wild animals from Spain, wine from various areas, oysters from Britain, and honey from Greece. Evidence of food uses and types generally comes to us from ancient authors, archaeologist who discovered seeds, animal bones etc…, and paintings of the times. The only work of any length about ancient Roman cooking is the cookbook of Apicius.
(OHT) This picture here is a recreation of a country kitchen. (READ OHT)
The dining room of the Romans was called the triclinium. Formal eating from the wealthier of Romans was reclining on their left elbows. An interesting aspect of the Roman dining was that they ate sitting on a couch around a table called the mensa. Before placing the food on the mensa it was cut up into small pieces. Romans ate with their right hand. Forks had not appeared, but knives and spoons were used. Waiters were mainly male. Jobs they were expected to complete ranged from pouring cold water and bringing hot towels to washing the diners' hands and feet and tying garlands around the heads of guests. They were also responsible for cleaning away food spat out or thrown as spitting or throwing food was a Roman tradition. (OHT) Here we see a platform arranged to form three sides of a square and this explains why their dining room was actually called the Triclinium because when the word is split, tri, meaning three and clinium, meaning reclining places room, hence triclinium means “three reclining places room”. This platform would have been spread with pillows to allow for comfortable reclining. There was a strict protocol to the placement of diners. The family reclined on the right, with the host at the top. The rest of the platform was for guests, with the middle segment reserved for distinguished guests. The dinner party was a close affair. The houses of the wealthy Romans usually consisted of several dining rooms to fit the seasons. This particular triclinium would have been intended to take advantage of warmer weather; there would have been another more protected triclinium in this house for colder weather. The triclinium below is just a more detailed picture as we see that the walls are covered in paintings and sometimes there were even floor pictures made up of tiny pieces of coloured tiles, called mosaics. These often served as talking points during the dinner.
The order the Romans ate was breakfast, jentaculum, after sunrise. Breakfast consisted of cold meats, eggs, vegetables and bread if you were part of a wealthy family whereas the poorer Roman families only had the luxury of porridge, sometimes a little honey and perhaps a few dates or olives. Lunch, prandium, if eaten at all, consisted of bread, fruit, cheese or perhaps some leftovers from the dinner the night before. Dinner, cena, was the main meal of the day, generally served in the late afternoon. Cena could consist simply of vegetables with olive oil for those of the lower class, or a most elaborate three course meal for the upper or maybe even [next page]