Ancient Roman Recipe & Food Sources

Ironically, the renowned cooks of ancient Rome were often Greeks. Among the Latin authors who have handed in their written recipes or information on eating habits at the time of the ancient Romans, there is:

Main sources on Roman cuisine:

Petronius in "The Dinner of Trimalchio," described in his novel Satyricon, offers detailed information about how a sumptuous banquet was organized.

Apicius's De re coquinaria included about five hundred recipes, many under his name. Only one known cookbook has survived: De Re coquinaria by Apicius, written around 400AD, with a supplement of the 6th century.

Roman cuisine is discussed in the Treaties of Agriculture:

Marcus Porcius Cato (234 BC – 149 BC) was a Roman statesman, commonly referred to as Cato Censorius (the Censor), Cato Sapiens (the Wise), Cato Priscus (the Ancient), Cato Major, or Cato the Elder (to distinguish him from his great-grandson, Cato the Younger); known for his conservatism and opposition to Hellenization. He came of an ancient Plebeian family who all were noted for some military service but not for the discharge of the higher civil offices. He was bred, after the manner of his Latin forefathers, to agriculture, to which he devoted himself when not engaged in military service. But, having attracted the notice of Lucius Valerius Flaccus, he was brought to Rome, and successively held the offices of Cursus Honorum: Military tribune (214 BC), Quaestor (204 BC), Aedile (199 BC), Praetor (198 BC), in which capacity he expelled the usurers from Sardinia, consul (195 BC) together with his old patron, and finally Censor (184 BC). In the latter office he tried to preserve the mos maiorum ("ancestral custom") and combat "degenerate" Hellenistic influences. His manual on running a farm (De Agri Cultura or "On Agriculture") is his only work that survives completely. It is a miscellaneous collection of rules of husbandry and management, including sidelights on country life in the 2nd century BC. Adopted by many as a textbook at a time when Romans were expanding their agricultural activities into larger scale and more specialized business ventures geared towards profitability, De Agri Cultura assumes a farm run and staffed by slaves. Cato advises on hiring gangs for the olive harvest.

Marcus Terentius Varro (116 BC – 27 BC) was an ancient Roman scholar and writer. He is sometimes called Varro Reatinus to distinguish him from his younger contemporary Varro Atacinus. Varro was born in or near Reate (now Rieti) to a family thought to be of equestrian rank, and always remained close to his roots in the area, owning a large farm in the Reatine plain, reported as near Lago di Ripa Sottile, until his old age. Politically, he supported Pompey, reaching the office of praetor, after having been tribune of the people, quaestor and curule aedile. He was one of the commission of twenty that carried out the great agrarian scheme of Caesar for the resettlement of Capua and Campania (59 BC). His only complete work extant, Rerum Rusticarum Libri Tres (Three Books on Agriculture), has been described as "the well digested system of an experienced and successful farmer who has seen and practised all that he records."

Lucius Junius Moderatus Columella (4 – c. 70 AD) is the most important writer on agriculture of the Roman empire. Little is known of his life. He was probably born in Gades, Hispania Baetica (modern Cádiz), possibly of Roman parents. After a career in the army (he was tribune in Syria in 35), he took up farming. His Res rustica in twelve volumes has been completely preserved and forms an important source on Roman agriculture, together with the works of Cato the Elder and Varro, both of which he occasionally cites. A smaller book on trees, De arboribus, is usually attributed to him.

The Natural History of Pliny the Elder

The Banquet of the Sophists by Athenaeus. The Deipnosophistae is the Latin title of an early 3rd-century AD Greek work by the Greco-Egyptian author Athenaeus of Naucratis. It is a long work of literary, historical, and antiquarian references set in Rome at a series of banquets held by the protagonist Publius Livius Larensis

In quotes from philosophers, satirists, novelists (Seneca, Horace, Juvenal (in his Satirae), Martial, Petronius, Apuleius)

Marcus Valerius Martialis (known in English as Martial) (March, between 38 and 41 AD – between 102 and 104 AD), was a Roman poet from Hispania (the Iberian Peninsula) best known for his twelve books of Epigrams, published in Rome between AD 86 and 103, during the reigns of the emperors Domitian, Nerva and Trajan. In these short, witty poems he cheerfully satirises city life and the scandalous activities of his acquaintances, and romanticises his provincial upbringing. He wrote a total of 1,561, of which 1,235 are in elegiac couplets. Martial's Epigrams give us indications of menus and food often appreciated, especially during the Saturnalia, the most popular feast of the year. Martial describes serving a more plausible dinner, beginning with the gustatio, which was a composed salad of mallow leaves, lettuce, chopped leeks, mint, arugula, mackerel garnished with rue, sliced eggs, and marinated sow udder. The main course was succulent cuts of kid, beans, greens, a chicken, and leftover ham, followed by a dessert of fresh fruit and vintage wine. (A multicourse dinner began with the gustatio ("tasting" or "appetizer"), often a salad or other minimally cooked composed dish, with ingredients to promote good digestion. The cena proper centered on meat, a practice that evokes the tradition of communal banquets following animal sacrifice. A meal concluded with fruits and nuts, or with deliberately superfluous desserts (secundae mensae).)

Anthimus (Greek: Ἄνθιμος; fl. 511–534) was a Byzantine physician at the court of the Ostrogoth king Theodoric the Great and author of De observatione ciborum ("On the Observance of Foods"), which is a valuable source for Late Latin linguistics as well as Byzantine dietetics. Though not a true recipe book, the text includes detailed instructions for making at least one Byzantine specialty (afrutum), using whipped egg whites, and a beef stew using honey, vinegar and spices. Preparations are described in more cursory terms for a number of other foods. Most of the preparations reflect Roman methods (using ingredients such as oxymel and oenomel), but the Frankish love of raw bacon is also cited. The author also specifically references whether specific foods were then available in Theodoric's region (near Metz in Northeastern France). Among other ingredients, the mention of several spices makes it clear that these were available in France long after the fall of Rome and centuries before the Crusades. On the Observance of Foods, translated and edited by Mark Grant.