Reference Book of the Week

Today's pick: Eating and Drinking in Roman Britain, by H. E. M. Cool, a professional archaeologist and archaeological consultant. First published in 2006 by Cambridge University Press.

The paperback edition is good value at 294 pages for $36.99, and even better at Amazon's current discount price ($29.59). No color plates, but a reasonable number of black and white photographs and some nice line drawings, also a lot of tabulated data of various types. There are also good reference maps in the front for the various localities discussed - particularly helpful for those not familiar with British geography. The reference list is good, and the data for the tables is fully and professionally attributed in the appendices.

This is a book for the serious Roman Britain enthusiast, amateur or professional. In addition the book is clearly and even amusingly written, with a dry and perceptive wit which makes it a pleasure to read. A brief quote from the preface will show the flavor: "Roman Britain is a very strange place, much stranger than the many popular books written about it would lead one to think ... This book is offered as a kind of hitchhiker's guide to those who would like to explore this material, but who lose the will to live when faced with the reams of specialist reports that even a minor excavation can generate."

After an introductory chapter ("Aperitif"), the author discusses the food itself, packaging, what we can learn from human remains, written evidence, kitchen and dining basics, staples, meat, dairy products, poultry and eggs, fish and shellfish, game, greens, and drink. This is followed by four time-based chapters covering the conquest, the development and decline of Roman Britain, and the period after the Roman withdrawal. This book will not give you recipes for Roman Britain - there are other books for that - but it will tell you the state of current archaeological knowledge regarding what foodstuffs and drinks were available in various parts of the country and how people were probably using them. In the process the author uses this evidence to tell us some surprising things about those people themselves. Highly recommended.

What's For Dinner? Part II

Thinking about medieval food brings up the subject of New World introductions: a fairly large percentage of what we -- Europeans and North Americans -- normally eat originated in the Americas. To see how large, let's look at some common menus.

Breakfast first. Bacon, eggs, and toast are on firm ground: the ingredients, if not the manner of preparation, were available in 6th century Britain. Oatmeal porridge with milk or cream is also safe. Cornflakes, however, are right out: maize is New World.

Lunch is a bit more of a problem. Hamburgers are fine, as long as you leave off the (tomato based) catchup, but you can't have fries with them. Potatoes are New World. Salad greens are mostly safe, and so are cucumbers, but again no tomatoes. Olive oil and vinegar are Mediterranean, and garlic. So are most pizza ingredients, if you leave off the (tomato) sauce.

And so to dinner. Contemporary feasting, like its medieval counterpart, includes large cuts of meat. Beef, pork, lamb, and chicken are no problem. Turkey is North American, as some of us notice every November. As I've already said, no potatoes, no tomatoes, no corn on (or off) the cob, and definitely no baked beans (all our beans except fava beans and related broad beans are New World). Rice was Old World, though probably not available in 6th century Britain, and the ingredients for pasta were there, though again probably not the thing itself. Beets and turnips are European. Many if not most hot peppers are originally New World; so are sweet peppers. Pumpkin or blueberry pie wasn't available, but apples, strawberries, dates and almonds have all been found in Roman deposits. The Romans had plenty of wine, and the Celts and Germans made beer in great quantity, but there was no tea or coffee in medieval Europe -- and definitely no chocolate!

What's For Dinner?

I mentioned some food preferences in Roman and sub-Roman Britain earlier, as indicated by archeology. Another approach, using later literary sources, takes us back to the Law of Hywel. This source, remember, is 9th to 13th century, but it does give us some insight into what was available and how it was managed.

Like everyone else, a King and his court had to eat. How did they get their supplies? Well, one way was by going a circuit through the land, stopping at various places where the noble owners or the bound peasants were required to feed them. Another source was customary food renders, paid on a seasonal basis. Here's an example: the food-gift owed by a free township to the King in winter-time consists of "a horse-load of the best flour that grows on the land, and a meat steer, and a vat's quota of mead ... oats as horse-fodder ... a three-year-old pig, and a salt flitch with fat three fingers' breadth thick, and a vessel of butter three fistbreadths deep ... and three wide ... if the mead cannot be had, two quotas of bragget; if bragget cannot be had, four of beer." Summer food renders also mention cheese made from cow's milk. Vegetables are evidently much less important.

If this all sounds like the ingredients for a bacon cheeseburger, or possibly a pizza (without tomatoes!), there may be reasons. More tomorrow...

A Nice Dish of Pig-Meat

"Pigs are not my favorite animals. Valuable and useful they are indeed, their flesh making good eating and their skins good leather. Powerful and magical they are as well, for did not Arawn King of Annwn himself give the first pigs to Pryderi, Prince of Dyfed, in token of the friendship that was between Arawn and Pryderi’s father Pwyll? And did not Gwydion the Magician steal those self-same pigs from Pryderi by a trick, and bring them home to Gwynedd? ... No, I like a nice dish of pig-meat as well as the next man, but I hold with the Irish that the pig-run should be kept out of sight and scent and sound of the owner’s house, and not only because of the smell of it."

So says my narrator Gwernin in Storyteller, and I have to say that by and large I agree with him - although for less personal reasons. Archeology indicates that many Britons, both during the Roman period and later, shared his taste for pork. It seems to have been particularly popular on Roman-era urban sites, and also at some legionary forts, although it was usually second there after beef. Pork bones also turn up with interesting frequency as offerings in graves, suggesting that it was either a prestige food or in some way connected with the supernatural. The story about Gwydion's pig raid (in the fourth branch of the Mabinogion) strengthens the supernatural connection, for Annwn was the Celtic underworld, and later in that story a sow is again involved in an equally magical context.

The Welsh Triads, a compilation of lists of people, animals, and occurences grouped in threes which served as a memory aid for bards and storytellers, has an interesting item called "Three Powerful Swineherds of the Island of Britain." The Swineherds in question were Pryderi (see above), Drystan (=Tristan) and Coll son of Collfrewy, and the Drystan part of the triad seems to refer to a lost Arthurian tale. Another Arthurian connection occurs in the tale of Culhwch and Olwen, where the hero Culhwch gets his name because he was born in a pig-run. Pigs in general have an inportant place in Celtic literature, and in Irish sources pig-meat was considered the food of the gods. They could also lead to trouble there, as in the tales of Mac Datho's Pig and Bricriu' Feast.

Think about that when you bite into your next ham sandwich.