Food in ancient Rome reflects both the variety of foodstuffs available through the expanded trade networks of the Roman Empire and the traditions of conviviality from ancient Rome's earliest times, inherited in part from the Greeks and Etruscans. In contrast to the Greek symposium, which was primarily a drinking party, the equivalent social institution of the Roman convivium (dinner party) was focused on food. Banqueting played a major role in Rome's communal religion. Maintaining the food supply to the city of Rome had become a major political issue in the late Republic, and continued to be one of the main ways the emperor expressed his relationship to the Roman people and established his role as a benefactor. Roman food vendors and farmers' markets sold meats, fish, cheeses, produce, olive oil and spices; and pubs, bars, inns and food stalls sold prepared food.
Bread was an important part of the Roman diet, with more well-to-do people eating wheat bread, and poorer people eating bread made from barley. Fresh produce, such as vegetables and legumes, were important to Romans, as farming was a valued activity. A variety of olives and nuts were eaten. While there were prominent Romans who discouraged meat-eating, a variety of meat products were prepared, including blood puddings, sausages, cured ham and bacon. The milk of goats or sheep was thought superior to that of cows; milk was used to make many types of cheese, as this was a way of storing and trading milk products. While olive oil was fundamental to Roman cooking, butter was viewed as an undesirable Gallic foodstuff. Sweet foods such as pastries typically used honey and wine-must syrup as a sweetener. A variety of dried fruits (figs, dates and plums) and fresh berries were also eaten.
Salt, which in its pure form was a relatively expensive commodity in Rome, was the fundamental seasoning. The most common salty condiment was a fermented fish sauce known as garum. Locally available seasonings included garden herbs, cumin, coriander, and juniper berries. Imported spices included pepper, saffron, cinnamon, and fennel. While wine was an important beverage, Romans looked down on drinking to excess and drank their wine mixed with water; drinking wine "straight" was viewed as a barbarian custom.
Food The main Roman ingredients in dishes were wheat, wine, meat and fish, bread, and sauces and spices. The richer Romans had luxurious lives, and sometimes hosted banquets or feasts.
Grains and legumes
Most people would have consumed at least 70 percent of their daily calories in the form of cereals and legumes.Peter Garnsey, "The Land," in Cambridge Ancient History: The High Empire A.D. 70–192 (Cambridge University Press, 2000), vol. 11, p. 681. Grains included several varieties of wheat—emmer, rivet wheat, einkorn, and spelt"Foodstuffs," in Late Antiquity: A Guide to the Postclassical World (Harvard University Press, 1999), pp. 453–454.—as well as the less desirable barley, millet, and oats.
Legumes included the lentil, chickpea, bitter vetch, broad bean, garden pea, and grass pea; Pliny names varieties such as the Venus pea,Flint-Hamilton, "Legumes in Ancient Greece and Rome," p. 373; Edwards, "Philology and Cuisine in De Re Coquinaria," p. 257. and poets praise Egyptian lentils imported from Pelusium.Vergil, Georgics 1.228; Martial 13.9.1; Ausonius 12.9.9; H.H. Huxley, Virgil: Georgics I and IV (Fletcher and Sons, 1963, 1967), p. 96. Legumes were planted in rotation with cereals to enrich the soil,Pliny, Natural History 18.134, 137; Flint-Hamilton, "Legumes in Ancient Greece and Rome," p. 373. and were stockpiled in case of famine. The agricultural writer Columella gives detailed instructions on curing lentils, and Pliny says they had health benefits.Columella, De Re Rustica 2.10.5–16; Pliny, Natural History 22.142; Flint-Hamilton, "Legumes in Ancient Greece and Rome," pp. 374–376. Although usually thought of as modest fare, legumes also appear among the dishes at banquets.Flint-Hamilton, "Legumes in Ancient Greece and Rome," p. 382; Seo, "Food and Drink, Roman," in The Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Greece and Rome, p. 198.
(pottage) was considered the aboriginal food of the Romans, and played a role in some archaic religious rituals that continued to be observed during the Empire.Pliny the Elder, Natural History 19.83–84; Emily Gowers, The Loaded Table: Representation of Food in Roman Literature (Oxford University Press, 1993, 2003), p. 17; Seo, "Food and Drink, Roman," in The Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Greece and Rome, p. 198. The basic grain pottage could be elaborated upon with chopped vegetables, bits of meat, cheese, or herbs to produce dishes similar to polenta or risotto.Stambaugh, The Ancient Roman City, p. 144. "Julian stew" () was made from spelt, to which was added two kinds of ground meat, pepper, lovage, fennel, hard bread, and a wine reduction; according to tradition, it was eaten by the soldiers of Julius Caesar and was a "quintessential Roman dish."John Edwards, "Philology and Cuisine in De Re Coquinaria," American Journal of Philology 122.2 (2001), pp. 258–259.
Urban populations and the military preferred to consume their grain in the form of bread. The lower classes ate coarse brown bread made from emmer or barley. Fine white loaves were leavened by wild yeasts and sourdough cultures.Kimberly B. Flint-Hamilton, "Legumes in Ancient Greece and Rome: Food, Medicine, or Poison?" Hesperia 68.3 (1999), p. 371; Seo, "Food and Drink, Roman," in The Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Greece and Rome, pp. 197–198. The beer-drinking Celts of Spain and Gaul were known for the quality of their breads risen with barm or brewers' yeast.Pliny, Natural History 18.68; Seo, "Food and Drink, Roman," in The Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Greece and Rome, p. 198. The poem Moretum describes a flatbread prepared on a griddle and topped with cheese and a pesto-like preparation, somewhat similar to pizza or focaccia.Carol Field, The Italian Baker: The Classic Tastes of the Italian Countryside (Random House, 1985, 2011), p. 250.
Maintaining a bread oven is labor-intensive and requires space, so apartment dwellers probably prepared their dough at home, then had it baked in a communal oven.Holleran, Shopping in Ancient Rome, pp. 134–135. Mills and commercial ovens, usually combined in a bakery complex, were considered so vital to the wellbeing of Rome that several religious festivals honored the deities who furthered these processes—and even the donkeys who toiled in the mills. Vesta, the goddess of the hearth, was seen as complementary to Ceres, the goddess of grain, and donkeys were garlanded and given a rest on the Festival of Vesta. The Fornacalia was the "Festival of Ovens". Lateranus was a deity of brick ovens.
Other produce
Because of the importance of landowning in the formation of the Roman cultural elite, Romans idealized farming and took a great deal of pride in serving produce. Leafy greens and herbs were eaten as salads with vinegar dressings.Seo, "Food and Drink, Roman," in The Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Greece and Rome, p. 198. Cooked vegetables such as beets, leeks, and gourds were prepared with sauces as first courses or served with bread as a simple meal. The Romans had over 20 kind of vegetables and greens. Cured olives were available in wide variety, even to those on a limited budget. Truffles and wild mushrooms, while not everyday fare, were perhaps more commonly foraged than today.Faas, Patrick (2005). Around the Roman Table: Food and Feasting in Ancient Rome, pp. 236-239. University of Chicago Press.
Provinces exported regional dried fruits such as Carian figs and Theban dates, and fruit trees from the East were propagated throughout the Western empire: the cherry from Pontus (present-day Turkey); peach (persica) from Persia (Iran), along with the lemon and other citrus; the apricot from Armenia; the "Damascan" or damson plum from Syria; and what the Romans called the "Punic apple", the pomegranate from North Africa.Patrick Bowe, Gardens of the Roman World p. 49; Phyllis Pray Bober, Art, Culture, and Cuisine: Ancient and Medieval Gastronomy (University of Chicago Press, 1999), p. 337; C. Srinivasan, Isabel M.G. Padilla, and Ralph Scorza, "Prunus spp. Almond, Apricot, Cherry, Nectarine, Peach and Plum," in Biotechnology of Fruit and Nut Crops (CABI Publishing, 2005), p. 512; Robert E.A. Palmer, Rome and Carthage at Peace (Franz Steiner, 1997), pp. 40, 45–46 (on the pomegranate). The Romans ate cherries, blackberries, currants, elderberries, dates, pomegranates, peaches, apricots, quinces, melons, plums, figs, grapes, apples and pears.Around the Roman Table, p. 239.
Berries were cultivated or gathered wild. Familiar nuts included almonds, hazelnuts, walnuts, pistachios, pine nuts, and chestnuts.Faas (2005), p. 239. Fruit and nut trees could be grafted with multiple varieties.According to Pliny, Natural History; Bowe, Gardens of the Roman World, p. 49.
Meat and dairy While there were prominent Romans who discouraged meat eating–the Emperors Didius Julianus and Septimius Severus disdained meatMontanari, "Romans, Barbarians, Christians," p. 166.–Roman butchers sold a variety of fresh meats, including pork, beef, and mutton or lamb.Seo, "Food and Drink, Roman," in The Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Greece and Rome, p. 199. Due to the lack of refrigeration, techniques of preservation for meat, fish, and dairy were developed. No portion of the animal was allowed to go to waste, resulting in blood puddings, meatballs (), sausages, and stews. Rural people cured ham and bacon, and regional specialties such as the fine salted hams of Gaul were items of trade. The sausages of Lucania were made from a mixture of ground meats, herbs, and nuts, with eggs as a binding ingredient, and then aged in a smoker.Edwards, "Philology and Cuisine in De Re Coquinaria," p. 259.
Fresh milk was used in medicinal and cosmetic preparations, or for cooking.Joan P. Alcock, "Milk and Its Products in Ancient Rome," in Milk: Beyond the Dairy. Proceedings of the Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery 1999 (Prospect Books, 2000) pp. 31–33. The milk of goats or sheep was thought superior to that of cows.Alcock, "Milk and Its Products in Ancient Rome," pp. 31–32. Cheese was easier to store and transport to market; literary sources describe cheesemaking in detail, including fresh and hard cheeses, regional specialties, and smoked cheeses.Alcock, "Milk and Its Products in Ancient Rome," pp. 35–37; Holleran, Shopping in Ancient Rome, p. 150.
Oils and fat
Olive oil was fundamental not only to cooking, but to the entire Roman way of life, as it was used also in lamps and preparations for bathing and grooming.Andrew Dalby, entry on olive oil, Food in the Ancient World A to Z (Routledge, 2003), p. 239. Various milling and crushing devices were used to prepare olives for the extraction of oil, including the (a rotary mill), some of the earliest of which can be found in Italy and the Aegean at pre-Roman sites. The olive orchards of Roman Africa attracted major investment and were highly productive, with trees larger than those of Mediterranean Europe; massive lever presses were developed for efficient extraction.David J. Mattingly, "Regional Variation in Roman Oleoculture: Some Problems of Comparability," in Landuse in the Roman Empire («L'Erma» di Bretschneider, 1994), pp. 91–93, 104. Spain was also a major exporter of olive oil, but the Romans regarded oil from central Italy as the finest.Dalby, Food in the Ancient World A to Z p. 239. Specialty blends were created from Spanish olive oil; Liburnian Oil () was flavored with elecampane, cyperus root, bay laurel and salt.
Butter, which quickly spoiled in the Mediterranean climate, was mostly disdained by the Romans, but was a distinguishing feature of the Gallic diet.Alcock, "Milk and Its Products in Ancient Rome," p. 33. Lard was used for baking pastries and seasoning some dishes.