Roman cooking: food, kitchens and ingredients

Start with the kitchen, not the banquet

Roman meals varied with wealth, location and season. Grain foods, vegetables and pulses belong in the picture alongside meat, fish and imported luxuries. Archaeological remains help us investigate actual consumption in Britain; an extravagant written menu from elsewhere in the empire does not describe every household.

How did people prepare food?

Cooking pots, hearths, ovens, quernstones and mortaria reveal different stages of preparation. A mortarium’s rough interior helped with grinding or mixing. Containers and residues can suggest food connections, but the shape of a pot alone does not identify the precise meal once cooked inside it.

What is Apicius?

The surviving collection known as De re coquinaria brings together recipes under the name Apicius. It is not a modern book of exact weights, oven temperatures and tested timings, and not every recipe can be assigned to a single famous gourmet. Translations also contain editorial additions: compare the ancient instruction with the translator’s commentary.

Try the flavours

Our recipe pages explain the historical starting point and supply clearly identified modern quantities where appropriate. Begin with eggs and pine-nut sauce or a grain pottage. Use commercially prepared fish sauce when a recipe calls for a garum substitute, and compare sweet, sour, salty and herbal flavours.