What Did the Roman Army Eat? Surviving on a Legionnaire's Diet

It's kind of a weird sensation. I like it though. Very delicious. Don't taste very nice. And they don't send you into a state. Hi, I'm Dan Snow and I'm heading back 500 years to central Mexico to sample an Aztec banquet. The Aztecs flourished 500-600 years ago and it reached its greatest extent, this empire, covering much of what is now central and northern Mexico. The empire was led from the magnificent capital city of Tenochtitlan and that emerged the dominant force in Mexico. It developed social, political, religious and commercial systems that brought many of the region's city-states under its control. That all came to an end when the Spanish invaders arrived, led by the conquistador Hernan Cortes, who overthrew the Aztec empire by force, capturing Tenochtitlan in 1521, which became Mexico City. In the heyday of the empire, most Aztecs spent their days working the fields, cultivating food for the inhabitants of Tenochtitlan. Since it was easier to grow crops than hunt, the Aztec diet was primarily plant-based and focused on a few major foods. You've got maize, you've got beans, and you add salt and chili peppers. Those were the constants of Aztec cuisine. Providing the average Aztec with a well-rounded diet, food played a really important ceremonial role in Aztec culture as well. Feasts were determined by the religious calendar and were used to display wealth. They featured singing, dancing, storytellings. They burned incense, they offered to the gods. There was tobacco and flowers and gift-giving. Festivities would begin about midnight. Some attendees would drink chocolate and consume hallucinogenic mushrooms so they could describe their experiences and visions for the other guests. Cannibalism was deeply rooted in Aztec mythology. The Aztecs believed that gods and goddesses needed to consume, sacrifice flesh and blood of humans in order to sustain themselves and the world. Since human flesh was seen as the food of the gods, ritual cannibalism had a sacred meaning, bringing the consumer closer to those gods. So you'd have the victims, usually prisoners of war, they'd be sacrificed in public on top of the pyramids and temples. By having their hearts cut out. Their bodies would then be thrown to the ground where they were dismembered and the bits of them could be distributed to the elite and then consumed in stews, often flavoured with salt, and eaten with tortillas. Luckily today, I've just got frog's legs. The Aztecs raised turkeys for meat and eggs. In fact, the bird was so important they turned it into a god. They called it the Jeweled Bird, a god of both plague and purification. This is one of the Aztecs' greatest contributions to world cuisine. All the Aztec dishes were cooked on a flat, round pottery griddle called a camale, and they still use it in rural Mexico today. It's with the camale that the Aztecs made the so-called Tashclali, which their conquerors called the tortilla, which is Spanish for little cake. Let's try this turkey tortilla. Mmm. That is delicious. We really should eat turkey more often and not just save it for Christmas. In Nahuatl, which is the Aztec language, the word tlaco means middle. Now, the best way to enjoy a tortilla is something in the middle of it, and that apparently is where we get the modern word taco from. The 16th-century Spanish chronicler portrays a really dizzying array of possible taco fillings, all of which were available from a local market. At Tenochtitlan, modern-day Mexico City, you could choose between vendors selling tacos filled with vegetables, like beans, squash, tomatoes, cactus, or meat, your dog, rabbit, turkey, etc. But perhaps the strangest filling was down on the lakeshore itself, where you'd have water insects, certain amphibians, and even algae. However, all of these would have been deliciously spiced with the seasonings that the Aztecs loved, like salt and chili. This one I'm trying today is turkey, tomato, pepper, flavored with a bit of chili, epazote, and salt, and it's delicious. Eating this reminds me, no European, African, or Asian had ever tasted a tomato before Christopher Columbus sailed across the Atlantic and bumped into the Americas and brought back a whole different bunch of food. The Aztecs saw the frog as Tlaltecutli, who embodied the endless cycle of life, death, and rebirth. Her name means the one who gives and devours life. She represented Earth and the sky, and was one of the Aztec gods most hungry for human sacrifice. Let's give this a go. Tastes a bit like chicken, but sort of crossed with fish. Perhaps surprisingly, it's about halfway in between. Frogs and toads were very common in the basin of Mexico, so it's no surprise they played a big part in Aztec mythology. Toads had another important role in Aztec religious practices because they secreted a poison on their bodies that could cause hallucinogenic states and would be used in ritual practices. That poison, that substance, is called bufotenin, and it impacts your cardiovascular system, and it's deadly if you have too much of it. Now, the act of getting high off these toads was restricted to the priests, the high people in the social hierarchy, and that allowed them to sort of interact with the gods in a way that ordinary people couldn't. Ordinary folk had to stick with frogs, which is what I'm eating today. They don't taste very nice, and they don't send you into a state. The most important Aztec staple was definitely maize. It was a crop held in very, very high regard. It played a central part in Aztec mythology. When the Europeans first arrived, the Aztecs described it as our precious, our flesh, our bones. Maize came in a variety of different colours and textures and sizes. You could eat it all sorts of different ways. It could be eaten as corn tortillas, tomales, or a tole. This, a maize gruel. It was pretty good. So what you do, you get your maize kernels, and then you dry it out, and then you soak them and cook them in an alkaline solution, usually lime water. And you get this nice porridge. Maize was so important that there was a sort of religious calendar around its harvest cycle. They created gods and goddesses to represent the maize in its various stages of development. There was a young goddess or god for young maize, and then when it was old, the seeds were dried, it was represented by an old goddess. It would have been a popular breakfast in Aztec times. It was served warm with milk, cane sugar, cinnamon. Definitely take the chill off in the morning. I wasn't looking forward to this. I didn't think I was going to enjoy it. But I've been amazed. Now for the highlight. Hot chocolate. Remember, no one from Eurasia Africa had ever tasted chocolate before the great Columbian Exchange that followed European explorers heading to the Americas. But the Aztecs have been enjoying hot chocolate for generations. Oh, that's delicious. But it's different to the way that we used to enjoy chocolate. They'd meet them as solid bars. They enjoyed chocolate as a frothy drink made from cocoa beans. Chocolate was used in their religious observances. It was used to mark betrothals, marriages, other big milestones of life. A little bit like we do today. It was also a key feature of the big festivals that brought everyone together, dancing and singing. Everyone's having a great time when you throw chocolate into the mix. And those clever Aztecs used chocolate as medicine. They mixed it with loads of other ingredients. This one's actually got chilli in it. I can really feel it at the back of my throat. It's great. And those ingredients varied from tree bark to opossum tails, depending on what it was supposed to cure. Chocolate was said to be pretty much good for anything. It treated digestion problems, infections, fever or heavy coughs. I can see why they thought that. I've never had hot chocolate that's got chilli in it before. It's kind of a weird sensation. I like it though. Cocoa was available to common people from time to time, but it was really associated with the Aztec elite. The ruler and his entourage drank it off their meals. They made it a kind of medieval Mexican equivalent of an afternoon of coffee or mint. Chocolate was a status symbol consumed by the wealthy. It was even given to warriors as a reward for acts of valour in battle. You either have a little medal or a big mug of hot chocolate. What do you prefer? Perhaps the most notorious Aztec chocolate lover of all was the Aztec ruler Montezuma II, who allegedly drank gallons of the stuff each day, for energy and as an aphrodisiac. Montezuma called this the Divine Drink, which builds up resistance and fights fatigue. A cup of this precious drink permits a man to walk for a whole day without food. I wouldn't go that far, but it's tasty. Aztec food is so remarkable. It existed on the same planet, but completely distinct from Eurasian and African food. And yet now it's so familiar as Aztec ingredients like tomatoes and chocolate have spread all over the world and are essential staples to so many of us. Thank you very much for Butser, Ancient Farm, for letting me come and try my Aztec banquet. Thanks for joining me, folks. If you've enjoyed watching, please click on any of the videos on this screen for more delicious content.