Food in ancient Rome
Food in ancient Rome reflects both the variety of food-stuffs available through the expanded trade networks of the Roman Empire and the traditions of conviviality from ancient Rome's earliest times, inherited in part from the Greeks and Etruscans. In contrast to the Greek symposium, which was primarily a drinking party, the equivalent social institution of the Roman convivium was focused on food. Banqueting played a major role in Rome's communal religion. Maintaining the food supply to the city of Rome had become a major political issue in the late Republic, and continued to be one of the main ways the emperor expressed his relationship to the Roman people and established his role as a benefactor. Roman food vendors and farmers' markets sold meats, fish, cheeses, produce, olive oil and spices; and pubs, bars, inns and food stalls sold prepared food.
Bread was an important part of the Roman diet, with more well-to-do people eating wheat bread and poorer people eating that made from barley. Fresh produce such as vegetables and legumes were important to Romans, as farming was a valued activity. A variety of olives and nuts were eaten. While there were prominent Romans who discouraged meat eating, a variety of meat products were prepared, including blood puddings, sausages, cured ham and bacon. The milk of goats or sheep was thought superior to that of cows; milk was used to make many types of cheese, as this was a way of storing and trading milk products. While olive oil was fundamental to Roman cooking, butter was viewed as an undesirable Gallic foodstuff. Sweet foods such as pastries typically used honey and wine-must syrup as a sweetener. A variety of dried fruits and fresh berries were also eaten.
Salt, which in its pure form was an relatively expensive commodity in Rome, was the fundamental seasoning. The most common salty condiment was a fermented fish sauce known as garum. Locally available seasonings included garden herbs, cumin, coriander, and juniper berries. Imported spices included pepper, saffron, cinnamon, and fennel. While wine was an important beverage, Romans looked down on drinking to excess and drank their wine mixed with water; drinking wine "straight" was viewed as a barbarian custom.
Food
The main Roman ingredients in dishes were wheat, wine, meat and fish, bread, and sauces and spices. The richer Romans had luxurious lives, and sometimes hosted banquets or feasts.Grains and legumes
Most people would have consumed at least 70 percent of their daily calories in the form of cereals and legumes. Grains included several varieties of wheat—emmer, rivet wheat, einkorn, and spelt—as well as the less desirable barley, millet, and oats.Legumes included the lentil, chickpea, bitter vetch, broad bean, garden pea, and grass pea; Pliny names varieties such as the Venus pea, and poets praise Egyptian lentils imported from Pelusium. Legumes were planted in rotation with cereals to enrich the soil, and were stockpiled in case of famine. The agricultural writer Columella gives detailed instructions on curing lentils, and Pliny says they had health benefits. Although usually thought of as modest fare, legumes also appear among the dishes at banquets.
Puls was considered the aboriginal food of the Romans, and played a role in some archaic religious rituals that continued to be observed during the Empire. The basic grain pottage could be elaborated with chopped vegetables, bits of meat, cheese, or herbs to produce dishes similar to polenta or risotto. "Julian stew" was made from spelt to which was added two kinds of ground meat, pepper, lovage, fennel, hard bread, and a wine reduction; according to tradition, it was eaten by the soldiers of Julius Caesar and was a "quintessential Roman dish."
Urban populations and the military preferred to consume their grain in the form of bread. The lower classes ate coarse brown bread made from emmer or barley. Fine white loaves were leavened by wild yeasts and sourdough cultures. The beer-drinking Celts of Spain and Gaul were known for the quality of their breads risen with barm or brewers' yeast. The poem Moretum describes a flatbread prepared on a griddle and topped with cheese and a pesto-like preparation, somewhat similar to pizza or focaccia.
Maintaining a bread oven is labor-intensive and requires space, so apartment dwellers probably prepared their dough at home, then had it baked in a communal oven. Mills and commercial ovens, usually combined in a bakery complex, were considered so vital to the wellbeing of Rome that several religious festivals honored the deities who furthered these processes—and even the donkeys who toiled in the mills. Vesta, the goddess of the hearth, was seen as complementary to Ceres, the goddess of grain, and donkeys were garlanded and given a rest on the Festival of Vesta. The Fornacalia was the "Festival of Ovens". Lateranus was a deity of brick ovens.
Other produce
Because of the importance of landowning in the formation of the Roman cultural elite, Romans idealized farming and took a great deal of pride in serving produce. Leafy greens and herbs were eaten as salads with vinegar dressings. Cooked vegetables such as beets, leeks, and gourds were prepared with sauces as first courses or served with bread as a simple meal. The Romans had over 20 kind of vegetables and greens. Cured olives were available in wide variety even to those on a limited budget. Truffles and wild mushrooms, while not everyday fare, were perhaps more commonly foraged than today.Provinces exported regional dried fruits such as Carian figs and Theban dates, and fruit trees from the East were propagated throughout the Western empire: the cherry from Pontus ; peach from Persia, along with the lemon and other citrus; the apricot from Armenia; the "Damascan" or damson plum from Syria; and what the Romans called the "Punic apple", the pomegranate from North Africa. The Romans ate cherries, blackberries, currants, elderberries, dates, pomegranates, peaches, apricots, quinces, melons, plums, figs, grapes, apples and pears.
Berries were cultivated or gathered wild. Familiar nuts included almonds, hazelnuts, walnuts, pistachios, pine nuts, and chestnuts. Fruit and nut trees could be grafted with multiple varieties.
Meat and dairy
While there were prominent Romans who discouraged meat eating– the Emperors Didius Julianus and Septimius Severus disdained meat–Roman butchers sold a variety of fresh meats, including pork, beef, and mutton or lamb. Due to the lack of refrigeration, techniques of preservation for meat, fish, and dairy were developed. No portion of the animal was allowed to go to waste, resulting in blood puddings, meatballs , sausages, and stews. Rural people cured ham and bacon, and regional specialties such as the fine salted hams of Gaul were items of trade. The sausages of Lucania were made from a mixture of ground meats, herbs, and nuts, with eggs as a binding ingredient, and then aged in a smoker.Fresh milk was used in medicinal and cosmetic preparations, or for cooking. The milk of goats or sheep was thought superior to that of cows. Cheese was easier to store and transport to market; literary sources describe cheesemaking in detail, including fresh and hard cheeses, regional specialties, and smoked cheeses.
Oils and fat
Olive oil was fundamental not only to cooking, but to the Roman way of life, as it was used also in lamps and preparations for bathing and grooming. Various milling and crushing devices were used to prepare olives for the extraction of oil, including the trapetum, of which some of the earliest can be found in Italy and the Aegean at pre-Roman sites. The olive orchards of Roman Africa attracted major investment and were highly productive, with trees larger than those of Mediterranean Europe; massive lever presses were developed for efficient extraction. Spain was also a major exporter of olive oil, but the Romans regarded oil from central Italy as the finest. Specialty blends were created from Spanish olive oil; Liburnian Oil was flavored with elecampane, cyperus root, bay laurel and salt.Butter, which quickly spoiled in Mediterranean climate, was mostly disdained by the Romans, but was a distinguishing feature of the Gallic diet. Lard was used for baking pastries and seasoning some dishes.
Seasonings and sweeteners
Salt was the fundamental seasoning: Pliny the Elder remarked that "Civilized life cannot proceed without salt: it is so necessary an ingredient that it has become a metaphor for intense mental pleasure." In Latin literature, salt ' was a synonym for "wit". It was an important item of trade, but pure salt was relatively expensive. The most common salty condiment was garum, the fermented fish sauce that added the flavor dimension now called "umami". Major exporters of garum were located in the provinces of Spain.File:Hoxne Hoard 26.jpg|thumb|Three silver-gilt Roman piperatoria from the Hoxne Hoard of Roman Britain
Locally available seasonings included garden herbs, cumin, coriander, and juniper berries. Pepper was so vital to the cuisine that ornamental pots ' were created to hold it. Piper longum was imported from India, as was spikenard, used to season game birds and sea urchins.
Other imported spices were saffron, cinnamon, and the silphium of Cyrene, a type of pungent fennel that was over-harvested into extinction during the reign of Nero, after which time it was replaced with laserpicium, asafoetida exported from present-day Afghanistan. Pliny estimated that Romans spent 100 million sesterces a year on spices and perfumes from India, China, and the Arabian peninsula.
Sweeteners were limited mostly to honey and wine-must syrup . Cane sugar was an exotic ingredient used as a garnish or flavoring agent, or in medicines.