My wife and I are big fans of everything that has to do with history and culture. While visiting a bookstore recently, she noticed a book titled Tasting History by Max Miller and Ann Volkwein [ Amazon • Goodreads • Google • Nelligan • WorldCat ]. It is a cookbook that recreates dishes from the past using historical recipes, adapting them for modern kitchen and putting them in their historical and cultural context. Knowing my interest for Roman history, she noted that it was containing several recipes from Ancient Rome and that Max Miller also had a website and a YouTube channel dedicated to this subject.

We quickly decided to take a look to his videos about Ancient Roman cuisine. It is very interesting, but heavily peppered with ads, sponsorship and products placements. It is quite popular (3.6 million subscribers) and offers a lot of material (443 videos so far), over forty of them about Ancient roman cooking (or other ancient recipes):

• Playlist: Ancient Greek, Roman & Mesopotamian Recipes
• Roman Funnel Cake: Ancient Roman Table Manners & Etiquette
• Ancient Roman Dining: How To Host An Ancient Roman Dinner
• Ancient Roman cheese: Feeding Emperor Augustus Caesar – Handmade Roman Cheese
• Feeding Alexander the Great: What did Alexander the Great eat?
• 2000 year-old dessert: Ancient Roman Cheesecake – Savillum
• Roman Honey Mushrooms: The Deadly Job of Royal Food Taster
• The Bread of Ramses III: Ancient Egyptian Spiral Bread of the Pharaoh
• Feast of the samurai: Feeding the Shogun: The Feasts of Feudal Japan
• Eating at the Coloseum: The Roman Colosseum: What It Was Like to Attend the Games
• Cooking with Garum: The History of Fish Sauce – Garum and Beyond!
• True Garum: Ancient Roman Garum Revisited
• Ancient Greek Beef Skewers: Eating Like an Ancient Greek Olympian
• Carthage’s Great General: General Hannibal’s War on the Roman Republic
• Ancient Roman Pizza: Making the 2000 Year Old “Pizza” from Pompeii
• Roman Pork & Apple: Feeding the Army of Roman Britain
• The Black Banquet: Ancient Roman Jellyfish for the Black Banquet
• Ancient Artichokes: Growing an Ancient Roman Garden
• Markets of Constantinople: Byzantine Honey Fritters
• Ancient Pancakes: Ancient Greek Breakfast – Teganites
• Lupercalia: Ancient Rome’s Naked Fertility Festival
• Ancient Cabbage: Ancient Rome’s Wonder Medicine: Cabbage
• Conditum Paradoxum: The Incredible Spiced Wine of Ancient Rome
• Emperor Nero’s Feast: Ancient Roman Steak Sauce
• Strange Gadiator: Gladiator Gatorade – Vinegar & Ashes
• Placenta: Baking An Ancient Roman Cheesecake
• Roman Hamburger: The Talking Cows of Ancient Rome
• Olive relish: Ancient Greek Olives – Gifts from A Goddess
• Trimalchio’s Feast: Ancient Roman Honeyed Pork
• Vitellian’s Peas: How To Feed A Roman Emperor: Vitellius & the Year of 4 Emperors
• Feeding a Roman Legion | Posca & Laridum
• Cocleas: Roman snails – Ancient Roman Fast Food Restaurants
• Io Saturnalia: Celebrating Saturnalia with Cato’s Globi
• Silphium: The Lost Aphrodisiac of Ancient Rome
• Asafoedita: The Strange Flavor of Parthian Chicken from Ancient Rome
• The Bread of ANCIENT ROME | Pompeii’s Panis Quadratus
• Oldest Cookbook in the West | APICIUS | Ancient Roman Mussels
• I finally made GARUM | Ancient Rome’s favorite condiment

 

I have always been curious about the Food in ancient Rome and the Ancient Roman cuisine. If many ancient roman authors anecdotally talk about food and cooking (for example, Max Miller profusely cites Martial, Suetonius, Petronius, Plinus the Younger, Plinus the Elder, Columella, Galenus, Seneca, Athenaeus, etc., in his videos) very few books on cooking have come down to us. There is actually only one:

• Apicius, De re coquinaria (On the Subject of Cooking) which seems to be a late compilation of recipes from various authors. It has not seen any recent publication or translation [besides Budé / Les Belles Lettres which is in French and not easily accessible], but it is available on the public domain [ Projet Gutenberg / Univ. of Chicago: Penelope ]. However, there is also a few books about or adapting Apicius:

• • Apicius, Barbara Flower & Elisabeth Rosenbaum. The Roman Cookery Book: A Critical Translation of the Art of Cooking, for Use in the Study and the Kitchen. An “adaptation” of Apicius published in 1958 and reprinted in 2012. [Amazon, Goodreads].
  • Apicius. Les dix livres de cuisine d’Apicius. Paris: Bonnel, 1933. [BANQ, Goodreads]
  • Marty-Dufaut, Josy. Mes meilleures recettes de l’Antiquité romaine : cuisiner avec Apicius. Bayeux : Heimdal, c2016. [BANQ, Goodreads]
  • Pedrazzini, Renzo. Saveurs et senteurs de la Rome antique : 80 recettes d’Apicius. [BANQ, Goodreads]

Three more books talk about the production of food while covering the subject of agriculture and provide a few recipes:

• Cato, De agri cultura (On agriculture) is a treaty about farming. It is available in French in the famous Collection Budé of Les Belles Lettres and in English in various editions (including Loeb Classical Library). It is often published together with Varro’s Res rusticae [Project Gutenberg]. It is also available in the public domain [Univ. of Chicago].
• Columella, De re rustica (On the rural issue) which is also a compilation of ancient texts, this time dedicated to agriculture and country life. It also has no recent publication (in French in Budé) but is partially available in the public domain [Univ. of Chicago]
• Varro, Rerum rusticarum libri III (Rural Topics in three books) or De re rustica or Res rusticae (On Agriculture) where he describes the management of a large roman farm (latifundium). Again not widely available as a publication (in French in Budé), but it can be found in the public domain [Project Gutenberg / Univ. of Chicago]
  • Nisard, Désiré [Ed.]. Les agronomes latins : Caton, Varron, Columelle, Palladius. Paris : J. J. Dubochet et Compagnie, 1844. An old French translation regrouping all of the roman texts on agriculture. [BANQ, Goodreads]

Of course, lots of books about Ancient roman cooking have been written. Here are a few examples:

• [Lily Heritage], The Cookbook from Ancient Rome: Classic Recipes Reimagined for Today [Amazon, Goodreads]
• Blanc, Nicole & Nercessian, Anne. La cuisine romaine antique. [BANQ, Goodreads, Nelligan]
• Chantal, Laure de [Ed.]. À la table des anciens : guide de cuisine antique. [BANQ, Goodreads]
• Dalby, Andrew. The Classical cookbook [BANQ, Goodreads]
• De Rubeis, Marco Gavio. Ancient Roman Cooking: Ingredients, Recipes, Sources [Goodreads, Amazon]
• Faas, Patrick. Around the Roman Table: Food and Feasting in Ancient Rome [Amazon, BANQ, Goodreads]
• Helton, Lauren M. A Culinary Journey Through Ancient Rome [Goodreads]
• Husson, René & Galmiche, Philippe. Recettes romaines. [BANQ, Goodreads]
• Quinot Muracciole, Martine. Rome côté cuisine. Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 2019. [Amazon, Goodreads]
• Salomon, Jon. Ancient Roman Feasts and Recipes Adapted for Modern Cooking [Goodreads]
• Tilloi-D’Ambrosi, Dimitri. Le régime romain : cuisine et santé dans la Rome antique. Paris : PUF, [2024]. [BANQ, Goodreads]
• Wells, Laurene R. Ancient Roman Eats: Roman Style Cooking for Modern Cooks [Goodreads]

Enjoy !!!

Note: This could be considered the first part of the series of articles that I promised to write about Roman literature. More to come eventually… (I am working on it, but please note that there are still six hundred and ninety three days before my retirement !) [Updated: 2025/06/30, 2025/07/01]

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