5 Ancient Roman Foods That Sound Strange Today

Roman cooks used fermented fish sauce to season vegetables, prepared dormice stuffed with pork, and sometimes served flamingo with dates and spices. Their places in Roman food culture were very different. Fish sauce could be an everyday kitchen staple. Fattened dormice and rare birds appear most often in accounts of costly meals prepared by specialist cooks.

What Romans ate depended on where they lived and what they could afford. The empire extended across Europe, North Africa and western Asia, where climate, local supplies and household income shaped what people ate. Grains, pulses, vegetables, fruit and olive oil sustained much of the population, supplemented by whatever meat or seafood families could obtain. Wealthy diners, meanwhile, employed specialist cooks and bought expensive ingredients. An unusual dish could display the host’s wealth as clearly as the setting in which it was served.

These five foods range from an everyday seasoning to extravagances associated with wealthy diners. Recipes and agricultural handbooks give instructions for making or raising ingredients. Excavated remains and inscriptions provide evidence for production and trade. Satirists, meanwhile, chose dinners that exposed the ambitions of their characters. They were making literary points about wealth and manners, so their descriptions cannot be treated as menus for the Roman population as a whole.

1. Garum: Fermented Fish Sauce in Roman Cooking

For Roman cooks, fish sauce was an adaptable source of salt and flavour. It could be made by salting small fish, entrails or other fish parts and allowing the mixture to break down before separating off the liquid. Salt helped preserve the mixture as the fish tissues broke down. Although ancient preparations varied, the principle has parallels in fermented fish seasonings still used in Asian cuisines and in Mediterranean ways of preserving seafood.

Roman writers used the terms garum and liquamen, though neither word consistently identified one recipe or quality throughout antiquity. Some producers worked with entire small fish; other prized sauces could include blood and internal organs. Food historian Sally Grainger has argued that putting every product in the same category obscures differences in manufacture, cost and use. Scholars continue to discuss the terminology, but the range of Roman fish-sauce products is clear.

The recipes assembled in De re coquinaria repeatedly call for liquamen. Although the collection bears the name of Apicius, a celebrated gourmet of the first century AD, the version that survives was put together later. Its cooks added the sauce to meat, vegetables and fish, often combining it with oil, vinegar, wine, honey or herbs. A finished dish might have a carefully balanced salty, acidic or sweet taste, rather than an overpowering flavour of fish. The sauce was one ingredient among several.

At Pompeii, researchers sampled residues from six large vessels in a building interpreted as a fish-sauce shop. A 2018 chemical study of the surviving residues examined minerals and fats in the contents, comparing them with sauce prepared experimentally. The results supported the presence of fish-processing material and raised the possibility that different vessels held different batches at the time of the eruption of Vesuvius in AD 79. Such analyses identify aspects of production, although they cannot tell us exactly what the sauces tasted like.

Amphorae provide evidence for the commercial distribution of fish sauce. These large pottery containers carried liquids and preserved foods, and their labels might name a sauce, identify a grade, or record someone involved in its sale. Pompeii’s commercial production included merchandise linked to Aulus Umbricius Scaurus, a prominent fish-sauce merchant. These inscriptions show an organised industry extending beyond individual kitchens. Producers needed fish, salt, equipment and workers; customers could then choose among products sold at different prices.

Fish sauce could be an inexpensive seasoning or a costly speciality. A basic preparation made meals more savoury, while a prized grade might cost considerably more. Amphora labels and recipes reveal an organised trade in products intended for different budgets and uses. Remains recovered from Herculaneum’s excavated sewer provide a useful reminder that fish and shellfish were also eaten directly in urban households, including households of modest means.

2. Dormice: Small Animals Fattened for the Table

The edible dormouse, Glis glis, was another Roman food, although it was far less ordinary. This bushy-tailed, tree-dwelling rodent is noticeably larger than a house mouse. Landowners could breed dormice and fatten them for sale or for their own tables. The Roman descriptions show that some estates raised these small animals as livestock for a specialised market.

In the first century BC, Marcus Terentius Varro explained the construction of dormouse pens in On Agriculture 3.15. Smooth interior walls stopped the animals climbing out. Trees inside the enclosure supplied food, supplemented when needed with chestnuts or acorns, while recesses provided places to breed. He also described specially made jars, fitted with feeding spaces and internal ledges, in which dormice could be kept in darkness while they put on weight.

The specialised jars, usually called gliraria, were not ordinary food-storage pots. Their ledges and recesses were designed for living animals that needed to move, climb and eat. Their construction allowed estate owners to fatten dormice for sale or for a costly meal. Varro describes darkness as part of the fattening process. The text does not, however, allow us to reconstruct the precise practices of every Roman establishment that used such vessels.

A recipe in De re coquinaria 8.9 describes a stuffed dormouse. Its filling included minced pork and chopped dormouse meat, together with pepper, nuts, laser and fish sauce. The cook could then roast the animal or prepare it in a pot. The directions are brief because they presume the reader already knows how to clean the animal and carry out the basic kitchen work. The recipe records a specialist preparation and tells us little about the diets of ordinary households.

Petronius uses dormice for comic effect in the Satyricon, usually dated to the first century AD. At the banquet of Trimalchio, a wealthy freedman anxious to impress his company, the guests are served dormice dressed with honey and poppy seeds. They arrive on little bridges arranged across a platter. Both the presentation and the host are part of the satire. Petronius expected readers to recognise the association between such dishes and ostentatious dining. His scene cannot establish that real banquet hosts routinely copied the display.

Together, these sources reveal several aspects of the same food. Varro gives the landowner’s account of breeding and fattening; the recipe book shows how a cook could prepare the result; Petronius turns it into an emblem of excessive hospitality. The stories told at Trimalchio’s banquet, including a well-known werewolf tale, add to the spectacle of the party.

Our fullest accounts of dormouse husbandry come from writers concerned with profitable estates or the habits of wealthy diners. Managing and fattening these animals demanded sustained effort. The surviving evidence instead shows how a small wild animal could become an expensive food through deliberate husbandry and a specialist cook’s work. Most Romans still depended far more heavily on grain, legumes and vegetables.

3. Snails: Roman Breeding Pens and Fattening Jars

Snails remain food in several European countries, so the Roman appetite for them is less surprising than the attention given to their cultivation. Roman writers describe enclosures built to keep the creatures alive, damp and well fed. Breeding snails was a small branch of estate management in which owners tried to turn animals readily found outdoors into a more valuable product for the table or market.

In a detailed passage in On Agriculture 3.14, Varro explains that snails need shade and moisture. Snail pens had to be protected from drying out, and water around the enclosure could prevent the animals escaping. He even explains how water sprayed against stone might create a fine mist. These details show how keepers prevented the snails from drying out in Mediterranean heat.

Varro distinguished snails by their place of origin and size. Those from Reate, in central Italy, were small and white; specimens from Illyricum, across the Adriatic, were larger; he also mentions African varieties. Roman buyers evidently recognised differences among marketable snails. It would be misleading to assign a modern species name automatically to each description. Varro was not working with present-day biological classification, and the ancient geographical labels do not necessarily correspond to one species each.

Farmers could also fatten snails in perforated containers coated with grape must, the juice from pressed grapes, and spelt, a cereal grain. Varro mentions bran and laurel leaves in the arrangements for feeding or sustaining the animals. The husbandry required attention to food and environment while the snails grew. The aim was to produce larger animals for sale, with more control over their size than collecting wild snails allowed.

A snail enterprise needed far less space than one raising large animals, and successful breeding might produce plenty of stock. Varro portrayed the venture as profitable. Yet his interest in commercially managed estates makes his optimism a poor guide to the income earned by a typical farm. The evidence tells us that such breeding was considered commercially promising, not what all Roman producers actually made from it.

Excavated shells can supplement the written descriptions, provided their context is understood. A snail shell might represent a meal, an animal that lived in the area, or material that entered a deposit long after its formation. Archaeologists must consider where the remains lay, what species are present, how numerous they are and whether preparation left visible traces. A single shell proves little about organised snail breeding. Varro’s detailed instructions remain especially valuable evidence for the husbandry itself.

Raising snails required knowledge of their environment and food, as well as regular care. An animal obtainable in the countryside could acquire commercial value when raised in conditions that kept it moist, fed and growing. At a wealthy dinner, its value reflected more than its availability in nature. Someone had invested knowledge, space and time in producing it.

4. Peacock: An Expensive Bird for Roman Banquets

Roman landowners valued peafowl as ornamental birds. Their elaborate, brightly coloured feathers made them attractive ornaments for gardens and estates. By the later Republic, they also appeared on the dining tables of the wealthy. A host who served a peacock was bringing an unusually conspicuous and costly bird into a setting where guests were expected to notice such expenditure.

Varro relates in On Agriculture 3.6 that Quintus Hortensius served peafowl during a banquet connected with his entry into public office. According to him, other wealthy diners soon followed the fashion. Pliny the Elder tells a similar story in his Natural History 10.45, but associates the meal with Hortensius’s admission to a priesthood. The exact occasion therefore cannot be securely recovered from these two accounts. What they preserve is a Roman tradition linking peacock dishes with prestigious occasions and elite imitation.

Breeding peafowl could itself be a substantial business. Varro reports that Marcus Aufidius Lurco earned over 60,000 sesterces annually from his birds and that individual young peafowl might fetch fifty denarii. These are the figures of an ancient author describing a particularly successful enterprise, not established prices or incomes for every estate. Varro is nevertheless informative about the work required: appropriate buildings and roosts, clean accommodation, a dependable grain supply and management of the breeding flock.

Keepers could increase the number of chicks by putting peafowl eggs under domestic hens and rearing the young birds separately. Enclosures needed maintenance, and predators had to be kept away. For a guest, the peacock might appear simply as evidence of the host’s wealth. Its arrival in the dining room depended on an agricultural operation that had already consumed feed, land, labour and considerable attention.

Pliny and other Roman moralists often credited one person with introducing an expensive fashion. This fitted a familiar story about elite society abandoning ancestral restraint. Those anecdotes may simplify or exaggerate how new a custom really was. Varro’s discussion of breeding is more dependable for understanding the material organisation of the trade than the claim that one fashionable dinner began the practice of eating peacock.

The later recipe collection De re coquinaria includes a book on birds, from domestic poultry to flamingo. Peacock appears in some manuscript headings, yet the preserved sequence does not give us a distinct recipe clearly identified as a peacock preparation. The chapter title is therefore insufficient grounds for inventing the ingredients or cooking method of a particular Roman peacock dish.

The evidence securely links peafowl with wealthy dining and purposeful commercial breeding. They were costly to keep, visually striking and, for successful breeders, potentially profitable. Serving one told diners something about the resources at a host’s command. We need not imagine that ordinary Romans ate them, or claim to know exactly how each bird was cooked, to understand why peacock was associated with luxury.

5. Flamingo: A Bird Cooked With Dates and Spices

Flamingo also appears in the surviving Roman recipe collection. One recipe deals with the entire bird, indicating that at least some cooks knew this preparation. Flamingos lived in Mediterranean wetland environments, but the written sources associate their consumption chiefly with expensive dining. They give us little reason to regard the bird as common household fare.

The instructions in De re coquinaria 6.6 begin by scalding and cleaning the bird. It is first cooked in water with salt, dill and vinegar, and then finished with leeks and coriander. Reduced grape must adds colour. A separate sauce combines pepper, cumin, coriander, laser root, mint, rue, vinegar, dates and some of the cooking liquid, and is poured over the flamingo. The author notes that parrot could be prepared by the same method.

The sauce provides a clearer indication of the expected flavour than the bird itself. Dates and concentrated grape juice added sweetness; vinegar brought acidity; herbs and spices supplied several layers of flavour. The cook was working with familiar combinations of sweet, sour, aromatic and salty elements. Many of the techniques would be understandable in a modern kitchen even though flamingo is no longer a usual choice of meat.

The preparation also took work. The cook had to clean the bird, manage its cooking in stages, and prepare a sauce from numerous ingredients. Laser was an esteemed ancient seasoning, usually discussed in connection with silphium or the substitutes used as supplies changed. The name did not necessarily refer to an identical botanical product in every period or text. We cannot reconstruct the exact plant behind every reference simply by reading the recipe’s ingredient list.

Pliny provides a separate example of the reputation of flamingo as food. He says in Natural History 10.133 that Apicius, the famous gourmet, helped make flamingo tongues fashionable. This is Pliny’s account of a particular elite taste; it says nothing about regular meals across the empire. Nor should the remark about tongues be folded into the surviving whole-bird recipe, as though they documented the same occasion or method of preparation.

Pepper entered Mediterranean markets along routes connected to the Indian Ocean, while dates and other fruits circulated through territories of the empire. These ingredients moved through trade networks connecting ancient markets. That does not establish where the particular bird was captured. It does show the range of supplies brought together for such cooking.

A written recipe establishes that someone recorded a way to prepare flamingo, not how often diners encountered it. We cannot count its consumers, reconstruct how regularly it was served or assume that cooks followed the directions without variation. Literary sources tend to preserve descriptions of spectacular meals served to wealthy diners. Their survival in writing can make an exceptional meal look more typical than it was.

Fish sauce belonged to manufacturing, commerce and everyday cooking. Dormice and snails required specialised breeding and fattening. Peacock and flamingo dishes made wealth visible at the table. Excavated food remains, including those from Herculaneum, keep the picture in proportion: most people also ate many ingredients that would be familiar today, and the dishes best remembered by literary writers were seldom the ones eaten most often.