My first attempt at cooking ancient Roman food comes from Apicius. I wanted to try something sweet and although he really doesn't seem to do sweet food he does have the odd recipe here and there. This recipe is a sort of nutty custard egg turnover...thing.
Apicius original recipe:
Pignolia nuts, chopped or broken nuts [other varieties] are cleaned and roasted and crushed with honey. Mix in [beat well] pepper, broth, milk, eggs, a little honey and oil. [Thicken slowly on fire without boiling, fill in moulds, taking care that the nuts do not sink to the bottom, bake in hot water bath, when cold unmould].
The first problem for me is there are no quantities listed and some of the ingredients are vague or unattainable. I really just had to take a wild stab in the dark here so my turnover recipe is this:
40g chopped mixed nuts
50ml whole fat milk
25ml honey
1tbs oil
1 egg
nutmeg
salt
Now hear me out on some of the deviations. The translators said that the 'broth' (liquamen) is essentially whatever liquid is needed for that particular recipe. I guess the slaves reading this instinctively knew what liquids went with what dishes. Since wine is always listed as wine the translator suggests 'broth' is either brine or garum in this case, and that a pinch of salt is an acceptable substitute. As for the 'pepper', that is more of a stand in word for spices and he suggested nutmeg or allspice as an alternative rather than actual cracked black pepper.
OK so lets cook this. First I roasted the nuts (maybe a little too far) and added the honey to the hot pan.
Next I put the milk, egg, salt and nutmeg together and whisked them up.
Mix everything together and heat slowly. I remembered I forgot the oil so I added it after I took this picture. No way was I going to be able to coax this lot into custard, and I'm not even sure if the Roman's had custard in the same was we know it in modern times. I read that their word for custard is 'egg-cheese' or something. It should help, but it doesn't. The English way is to use just egg yolks, so having the whites in there is going against everything I know about custard. As far as consistency and cooking times go here I really was in the dark.
Starting to feel lost I decided to decant the mixture into a mould. I had a plastic one although I'm seriously curious about what the Roman's would have used, metal I suppose? Glazed clay or pottery? At this point it really stank like farty old nuts.
It says to bake it in a hot water bath. Some people on line suggested filling a baking tray with water, placing the mould in the water and cooking it in the oven. I don't know why but it felt wrong to me, so I filled a large pot with water and put an upturned plate in there so the pudding is elevated away from the direct heat, then I covered it and cooked it with the lid on for 25 minutes. Again, it's sheer guess work here.
All cooked, it looks like that fat & seed stuff you put in your garden for birds. It smells a lot better than before but still not that appetising to me.
It turned out very easily, just slid out of the mould. It set very well too and was easy to cut. The set 'custard' part has the consistency of a blancmange and a rather disgusting, glistening wobble to it. Apicius talks about not letting the nuts settle so I imagine when he poured it into the mould it was of a thickness that could easily suspend the nuts whilst cooking. I failed there.
What did it taste like? Really damn nutty, like when you buy a cheap 'nut flavoured' pudding and some moron at the factory had jacked the nut flavouring up to 100. Not a good taste for me I'm afraid. The mouth feel of it was bizarre, the bottom was super chewy with boiled nuts and the top was exactly like a sloppy blancmange. The outside was spotted with oil that had separated during the cooking process so it looked a little diseased as well. That's my fault though, I find it hard to imagine such a lame looking pudding turning up at a rich patricians dinner party.
I really don't know if this is anything remotely like the Romans would have experienced although I strongly suspect not. I could have made this any number of ways, the recipe leaves it open to any number of interpretations. Had I only put in a scattering of nuts and more honey I image it would maybe be nice. We also have pasteurised milk here in modern England whereas back then in ancient Italy it would have been far creamier and thicker, so that makes a difference. Maybe they did put garum and peppercorns in there, in which case it's getting even weirder to my modern palate. Sugar is defiantly more of a day to day thing for me, so a pudding with less sugar in tastes extremely bland whereas to a Roman it's probably really sweet. It's safe to say that if I ever went back in time to ancient Rome I would, in the style of Carl Pilkington, pack a suitcase of monster munch to sustain me.
