The Romans can be rightly considered the first true gourmets, as the their civilization attributed great importance to the kitchen, especially during royal and imperial. The food, however simple, was based on barley, wheat, barley, chickpeas, fava beans, pecorino (caseum), sheep meat, honey, eggs, garlic, onion, vinegar, lentils, leeks, cabbage and chicory. Were prepared soups and polenta (pultes) with cereals that were available. Organized herds of hares, pheasants, guinea fowl, quail and peacocks, and large piscinae, or tanks where they were raised, mainly bream and eels. An animal which was brought to a remarkable care and concern was farmed goose, whose livers were prepared with the "mess", the ancestors of the most famous French "pates de foie gras."
Very popular were wine, bread and fish-d 'fresh water and sea. " Wine was consumed in the ritual of the deity responsible for it, the Dionysus. Salt was valuable for the preservation and exhibition this value is the compensation given to the legionaries, precisely in salt-Salarium.
They used to use as a flat unleavened bread (mensae).
With the conquest of territories in the Mediterranean and the Middle East, many imported foods not previously present in the diet: chickens, guinea fowl and ostriches from North Africa, truffles, pheasant, honey and dried fruit, Greece, ham, cheese, mushrooms and oysters from Gaul, asparagus and peaches from Persia, cherries and melons from the Black Sea
butter, beer (barley beer) and mead (fermented honey and water) from foods were considered "barbarians" and thus missing its own history and food culture.
After the conquest of Arabia, We mention in some documents of a drink prepared with toasted seeds and crushed a plant unidentified (ex Arabis potio calida fabulis tostis tritis "): in all likelihood it was an ancestor of coffee, then forgotten for many centuries. Also from the east, through the caravan routes, arrived in Rome the much sought spices (pepper, coriander, cinnamon, ginger, etc ...).
was virtually unknown sugar, honey, and replaced by a sweet syrup made from grapes, were widely used fennel, cumin, mustard, saffron, thyme and myrtle berries.
the first test of real kitchen is the "De Arte Culinaria" attribuito a Celio Apicio e da considerarsi una vera e propria pietra miliare.
E’ interessante anche che, eruditi famosi come Marco Porcio Catone, Orazio Flacco, Virgilio e Columella abbiano lasciato appunti riguardanti conservazione e preparazione delle pietanze.
Sulla base di questa antologia si evince che nel periodo imperiale a Roma esisteva una cucina ricca e raffinata, insaporita da molte salse, ma il popolo poteva contare quasi esclusivamente su pane, formaggio, erbe, ortaggi e poco altro.
Il pensiero comune romano in campo culinario è quello secondo cui l’arte del cuoco stia nel contraffare e travestire gli alimenti per mezzo di spezie e sapori –ritenuti preziosi e rari e che quindi attribuiscono ricchezza al piatto adding value, "get a fish from a vulva, a pigeon from a piece of bacon, a dove from a ham and a chicken from a salted pork," he writes in the Satyricon Petronius Arbiter.
Bibliography and sitorafia - http://eugeenblog.blogspot.com/2010/06/bibliografia-e-sitografia.html
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