#ancient food

[copperbadge]

I had some questions about the "Roman Bread" on my Pompeii food post, including what the string that bound the loaves was for and had I ever tried it. I don't tend to like working with wet/slack doughs or sourdough, both of which the Roman bread was, but at the time I did have two loaves of beer bread rising, so I figured I'd try out the string technique. This beer bread is a relatively soft dough that normally bakes inside a pre-heated cast-iron pan in a very hot oven, which is actually similar to how Roman bread would have baked.

[ID: Three photos of a loaf of beer bread; in the first, the unbaked dough is sitting on parchment, bound with a string around the outside and with scoremarks in the top to divide it into wedges. In the second, the baked loaf is resting on a cooling rack, the scoremarks evident but not overly deep; in the third, I am holding the bread by the string around its edge, as it dangles sideways in the air.]

The most widely-held theory is that the string allowed a customer to carry the loaf easily, although bakers have pointed out (and I believe classicists generally agree) that binding the dough also gives it more structure. The loaf definitely stood much taller and baked up "higher" with a binding made from doubled-over butcher's twine than it would have normally. I scored the top with a lame, but the scoring didn't hold as true as I'd have liked; bakers who have done more work with Roman bread generally don't score it this way and instead use a floured dowel to press all the way through the dough and then let it come back together, which is how they believe ancient bakers did it.

Some bakers have said that tying the string around the middle also allows you to rip the loaf lengthwise, splitting top and bottom; mine didn't work super well for that, but I also was working with a stronger crumb, I suspect.

But yeah, all in all, the string is useful if you want to give your loaf more structure and held the bread well enough that I certainly could have carried it around an ancient market if I'd had a mind to.

[heu-me-miserum]

There’s an unfortunate bias in ancient literature for elite perspectives that makes it very difficult to get the full picture of a lot of things in the ancient world. This extends to food, which has been very frustrating in my research, but here are a few things I’ve learned:

Meat and fish were mainly elite foods, but preserved meats and fish in smaller quantities or lower qualities could be afforded by lower classes

Everyone had fish sauce (garum), it was more common than salt, as common as ketchup

Cookbooks in the ancient world were intended for elite entertainment, not references for actual cooks, who were mostly illiterate

The most common meats for the lower classes were birds

There is so much mystery in ancient texts about ingredients in recipes, example: Theophrastus described a berry that people translated as a cherry but it was actually a hawthorn berry

Wheat was too expensive for poorer classes, they mostly ate millet and barley as staples

There is basically zero research on inland preserved fish pricing at the moment

[ancientprettythings]

Three terracotta statuettes related to food.

At the top, a Korinthian cheese seller . Made c. 380 BCE in Korinth.

Middle, a moving model of woman making dough. Made c.450 BCE in Rhodes.

At the bottom, a child butchering a pig while, what I take to be a monkey (or a bird?), looks on. Made c. 420 BCE in Boeotia.

[nokkosviidakko]

A quick (15mins) study on a Roman honey cake! I got really hungry painting this, so don't be surprised if you see me actually making these in the future :3

I referenced a photo from eliotseats.com recipe for libum.

[briery]

Noted food historian Sally Grainger prepares an ancient Roman dish using Ferula drudeana during an experiment at Istanbul’s Nezahat Gökyiğit Botanical Garden. “Silphion is a fascinating plant, and I can understand why the Romans craved it,” she says.

[moonmoonthecrabking]

reminder that there is a dish from ancient greece + ancient rome called placenta cake :)

[shinesonhistory]

[emmaklee]

(via Good enough to eat? The box of chocolates that's 106 years old | Daily Mail Online)

[hiivess]

food for thought

I'm not sure how many cultures got to experience the wonder that is grilled cheese, so my question is: do we have the knowledge to make a grilled cheese sandwich exactly as the ancient Greeks or any culture without a record of grilled cheese making would have? If I wanted to make a grilled cheese exactly how Socrates would have, could I?

[prokopetz]

One of my favourite bits of linguistic trivia is that in Ancient Greek, the word ἰχώρ (cognate to the modern English "ichor") is attested in extant literature to mean both "the bodily fluid which gods possess instead of blood", and also "gravy", which implies several things about Ancient Greek culinary culture's attitude toward gravy.

[graceandpeacejoanne]

HER STORY: Exodus Pioneers, Hannah

It’s story that starts out in misery, but it ends in rejoicing.

Has there ever been a time when you found yourself in a group of people enjoying themselves and you felt utterly alone? Maybe unseen, certainly not noticed, no one knew what you were feeling, there was no one to relate to. It’s like going to a party, that for you ends up being a test of endurance, not the fun it was supposed to be. That’s at the heart of Hannah’s story, found in 1 Samuel…

[kamabokobun]

A dance, Princess?

[soarrenbluejay]

Supervillains for a community. (Well, except those jerks over in Gotham, insular lot, but they’re they’re one problem) Of course they do- supervillains are a group defined by strong opinions and a willingness to see them through, often with a healthy dash of societal failures and trauma as a catalyst.

The fentons, while not active even on the online message boards, are well known and explosive when they do show up, full of fascinating insights and hours long rants on mad science on hair pin turns courtesy of that ADHD attention span. Bit of the cryptids you feel honored to bump into kind of deal. Besides, like a good quarter of the community as it aged, they’d settled down and had kids (not necessarily in that order) and taken it very seriously! Out in the middle of nowhere, where even the most fearsome government outpost members, the local branch of the IRS, quake before them in fear. Out of the way.

Reveal gone okay-ish, Danny moves to Gotham still to get some air bc now things are Akward and he landed that engineering scholarship which is loads better than any other college would give him with his track record. So- the mysterious Fenton children are finally crawling out of hiding! Everyone is psyched! And roll in to Gotham en masse to witness the fireworks!

Except Danny is Determined To Be Normal. He’s had enough of the throwing himself into harms way shit for a lifetime- he wants to be free to peacefully built Rube Goldberg machines and unintentional increasingly complex bombs to his hearts content. JAZZ, on the other hand- the coveted token Normal One, has finally snapped! She’s watched her baby brother she practically raised throw himself into danger over and over and could do nothing, and now that she’s exposed to this whole network of superheroes outside of small town Amnity, some of those uglier emotions are coming out. And boy is she pissed! And can’t afford to show it much while filing the paperwork to have Arkham legally razed to the ground!

See I love this idea of like, niches in superhero society. A villain the heroes know they can plop their kiddo down with for an exciting afternoon brawl while they take care of a particularly grisly case and come back to a few hours later ranting about some new life lesson and a new move they really want to try. A villain who has a functioning moral compass despite their somewhat batshit long term goal and you can contact to fuck with another villains’s plan so they can laugh at them and you can have an easy afternoon. One who pries up hostile architecture and fills in pot holes, idk man. Get creative here, there’s such potential!

So Jazz becomes a Training villain- someone the heroes know their sidekicks will walk away from in a fight 100% of the time, usually with some new lesson to ponder and only a couple of bruises. Sometimes even snacks!

She also absolutely ambushes mentors to check that they’re worth the kiddo, which they appreciate once they get over being jumped in a dark alley by a 7 foot Amazon trained force of nature. They are not used to being on that side of the jumping, it’s a little unnerving.

(Yes, she low key adopts Shazam upon checking in with him on cursory ‘is the main hero of this city and asshole’ checkin. Yes, the super clones get yoinked out from under Superman’s negligent thumb to go have a blast with Ellie. What about it?)

This however only encourages more assorted weirdos to crawl out of the woodwork. It’s not often one of their own forfeits their potential spot for the running of the coveted Most Normal I Swear prize, but when they do it’s bound to be good! But jazz is off hounding various heroes and punching the faces in of pedophiles and shit whenever there’s no cape within easy reach, and so is a mite bit harder to contact than Danny, who has innocently gotten an apprenticeship under a clockworker for access to their workshop and is gleefully going about doing nerdy shit with great abandon.

Plus this is Gotham. No one gives a shit if someone in the Mad Alchemist uniform and still smoking from their latest experiment pokes their head in a window to bother the local shrimp teen- none of the usual social rules apply, everyone’s crazy here! So everyone drops any and all attempts at masking and just acts their genuine unhinged selves, much to the alarm of the Bats and frustration of Danny.

Bc he cannot get these mfers to go. Away. Even liberal use of the creep stick has little effect when the interloper is calibrated for an opponent with super speed or laser vision or whatever, and he’s trying to maintain his guise as a Normal College Student Do No Investigate.

So he calls in the big guns. He’s not super active in the supervillain kids group chat ever since things in amnity calmed the fuck down post becoming King and then immediately using a loophole that says he will not take the throne until he is grown, as defined by finishing learning his trade a la the medieval standards Pariah set up. So he can just take his sweet ass time with his graduate degree and out of inter dimensional bull shit that much longer! Point is, he hasn’t taken the chance to rant over there in a while, so his Crazy friends are getting a lil worried.

The change to come over and shout at their batshit crazy but (mostly) well meaning parent AND see Danny? Score!

The bats, however, are getting awfully suspicious about this one kid that villains from all over the country are flocking to, especially young and upcoming ones as of recently! And he’s acting his engineering course- all the worst rogues are known to have flown through their PhD studies prior to Cracking. They seem to have a real problem on their hands with this Fenton guy.

[weirdsht]

Eruhaben is such a grandpa, ofc he would know what his kid wants to eat

Side note: I love how Cale will always give in to the children's wants and demands I'm trying really hard to not say something angsty about it because i want to keep this post cute

[geomimetry]

suggestive monster stuff under the cut

i havent posted art in almost a year and this is what i decide to break the ice with hi

go big or go home amirite