Oysters and Clams - Ancient Roman Recipe

Welcome to our kitchen. Today we prepare an ancient Roman recipe from the first book of De Re Coquinaria, oysters and shellfish with cumin sauce. We start with the ingredients. We need oysters, clams, smooth clams, garum, honey, white wine vinegar, then the spices, black pepper, cumin, and lovage, and the aromatic herbs, parsley, and mint. First, we prepare the sauce. We grind in the mortar the spices and the minced aromatic herbs, mix with garum and honey, and dilute with vinegar. This sauce is called cuminatum in the text, which means that it is a cumin-based sauce. The author recommends using a good amount of this spice without providing the ratio among the ingredients. Remember that if this author wants a specific ratio, he writes it down, and if you use common sense, it is very hard to ruin this kind of historical sauce. Balance is essential to prepare ancient Roman plates. We suggest mixing one part each of black pepper and lovage with 4 or 5 parts of cumin, up to your taste. If you don't have lovage, substitute it with fennel or anise seeds, as recommended by Pliny and Dioscorides. The author lists fresh parsley and dry mint, but we used both fresh. We recommend following your taste and using the quantity of herbs you like. The ratio among the liquid ingredients must be reasonable, for example one part each of garum and honey and two of vinegar. You can use as units of measurement a pinch for the spice and a teaspoon for the liquids, but it's not really important the quantity but the ratio. In this way, you will obtain a balanced sauce. Try it before pouring the sauce on the shellfish and adjust the flavor to your taste. As always, using garum is better, but not mandatory for a good outcome. If you don't like it, use salt instead. One pinch of salt is equivalent to, more or less, a tablespoon of garum, but clearly, it depends on the salt content of garum, which can be more or less salty. Adjust the saltiness to your taste. Other possibilities are to use colatura di alici, ancient Murria, or a Southeast Asian fish sauce. In the description below, you find the links to the videos to prepare garum and Murria from scratch. Then, we cook oysters, clams, and smooth clams. The cooking time is different for the three shellfish, but cooking them together is not a problem, just wait until they are all open. The author writes that this sauce is for oysters and other shellfish. You can use just oysters or add the shellfish you prefer to prepare this dish. Oysters in ancient Rome were expensive, a food that appeared in the richest tables as a display of luxury, as we read in Martial's epigrams. Galen in the 2nd century writes that they were eaten raw or cooked, exactly as we do today in Italy, and Antimus in the 6th century confirms that at his time it was still common. The author of this recipe writes nothing about the cooking method. If you want to know more about lovage and fish in the Antiquity, check out our Patreon page, in which you find translations of historical sources and articles about ancient and medieval food. On Amazon, you find our book Ancient Roman Cooking and Registrum Coquine, a medieval cookbook, available in print and e-book editions in English and Italian. To support our work, you can also buy us a beer and purchase our merchandise. You find all the links in the description below. This dish turned out savory and spicy with Mediterranean flavors, intensely fragrant with cumin and aromatic herbs. A great dish that you can serve as an appetizer, absolutely perfect in a modern Italian menu, or as a main dish in a Roman feast with other fish and meat dishes, as common in ancient Rome. If you're interested in ancient foods and flavors, subscribe our channel and consider supporting us on Patreon.