For more information about ancient cuisine, check out our book Ancient Roman Cooking. The first five books of De Re Coquinaria are available on Patreon, with other translations of ancient and medieval sources in addition to several articles on historical food. If the crust is sufficiently thin, the cooking time is short: as soon as the crust is cooked, the ham is done. We cooked the ham under the testum, a sort of ancient portable oven, covering it with charcoal to bake it evenly. In this way, there is a good balance between saltiness and sweetness, improving the flavor of the salted meat. The recipe includes carica, which is a variety of figs that were dried, boiled with the ham, and honey, spread on the ham. After cooking it, the author specifies that we must knead a dough with oil, remove the rind and substitute the rind of the ham with this crust. Apicius’ recipe is meant for the whole ham, but we used just a piece. This kind of preparation, called pastello or coppo in the medieval Italian cookbooks, as well as pies with various kinds of fillings, is very common in the Middle Ages, whereas is rare in ancient Roman cuisine, in which appears a pie called artocrea that looks like medieval pizza. These Saturnalia, we chose a recipe from De Re Coquinaria for ham wrapped in crust. The habit to eat raw meat, indeed, was considered typical of the barbarians, as we also read in Anthimus’ De Observatione Ciborum, in which this Byzantine author wonders about the fact that the Franks consider raw laredum a delicacy. Greeks and Romans cooked salted meat, including ham and pork fatback, laridum in Latin. There are interesting and extensive descriptions in the works of these authors, which show the great importance of salting meat in the Antiquity, especially pork. The ham, called perna in Latin, was commonly prepared in winter by salting the pork legs and exposing them to smoke according to Varro (who appreciates in particular the ones produced by the Gauls), Columella, Palladius, and Cato. Among the gifts, we find cured pork belly, Lucanicae, hams, and shoulder hams. Martial dedicates two books of his Epigrams to the notes that accompanied the gifts, frequently food and beverages. Between the 17 th and 23 rd of December, depending on the historical period, ancient Romans celebrated one of the most important festivities of the year, the Saturnalia, characterized by feasts and exchanges of gifts.
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