Romans eating out.

[caldrail]

Wow , I didn't realise until now how important bread was to the standard Roman diet,

I suppose they didn't have much money to spare for meat.

One of the reasons that public games were so popular in the empire was the availability of meat. Slaughtered animals are now thought to have been butchered for free giveaways - though I suspect enterpising men managed to profit from it.

[Klingan]

I get the feeling that a lot of romans actually did enjoy their bread quite much too, not eating it just beacuse that was the only/easiest/cheapest thing they could get. I did read somewhere that the legions wouldn't tolerate to be fed on a meat based diet for any longer period, they wanted bread (I wish I could find it again cause it was a little more elaborated in the book).

[caldrail]

Roman bread was grittier than our own and did nothing for their teeth. I'm not sure about the bread preference of the legions but if true thats interesting.

[Pertinax]

Roman bread was grittier than our own and did nothing for their teeth. I'm not sure about the bread preference of the legions but if true thats interesting.

Ive mentioned this a while ago , Cruse (Roman Medicine) is keen to emphasise that dental finds in Britain show Roman era teeth to be well worn , but significantly less carious than modern dentition. The logical suggestion is tough endospermatic grains and no sugars in the diet.

http://www.unrv.com/forum/index.php?automo...=si&img=923

some of you will recall this chap from previous threads!

[Gaius Octavius]

I believe that the legionaries diet contained one meat meal a day. They also invented pizza. Flattened out dough topped with onions, garlic, cheese, olive oil, and what else. In the field, cooked on a hot stone. Tomatoes hadn't been invented yet.

Edited April 24, 2007 by Gaius Octavius

[Northern Neil]

When were tomatoes invented?

[Klingan]

When were tomatoes invented?

 

Invented would be a bad choice of word. They come from South America and was brought back to Europe by the Spanish and started to be cultivated in there during the 1540's AD. The first discoveredcookbook mention tomatoes is from the late 17th century Naples.

[Northern Neil]

When were tomatoes invented?

 

Invented would be a bad choice of word. They come from South America and was brought back to Europe by the Spanish and started to be cultivated in there during the 1540's AD. The first discoveredcookbook mention tomatoes is from the late 17th century Naples.

Many thanks for that! The word 'invented' is used humerously!

[Klingan]

When were tomatoes invented?

 

Invented would be a bad choice of word. They come from South America and was brought back to Europe by the Spanish and started to be cultivated in there during the 1540's AD. The first discoveredcookbook mention tomatoes is from the late 17th century Naples.

Many thanks for that! The word 'invented' is used humerously!

 

 

I thought so but could just as well note it. The modern strawberries was actually "invented", or more exactly a result of crossbreeding between two earlier variations.

[Northern Neil]

Did they have strawberries then? In England you can get 'wild' strawberries which are quite nice, but about the size of peas.

[The Augusta]

Would this be an appropriate thread to ask about citrus fruits and the Romans? They did not use the word 'orange' to describe that colour, for instance - do we then take it that the fruit was not known to the Romans either? Same with lemons and limes. Have the Spanish always had their Seville oranges? Even when they were a Roman province?

 

As Klingan seems pretty knowledgable about fruits - perhaps he could shed some light on this for me.

[docoflove1974]

Have the Spanish always had their Seville oranges? Even when they were a Roman province?

 

I don't know about the other words off the top of my head, but the word for orange (the fruit) in the Romance languages comes from the Arabic nāranǧ, from the Persian nārang, which in turn is from the Sanskrit word nāraṅga. I don't know for sure of the history of the fruit, but I do know that the Moors 'brought back' much agriculture--both plants and techniques--that had been 'lost' since the fall of Rome.

 

When I put together a list of culinary/food terms for my Spanish students, the number of terms that were brought to the Iberian Peninsula by the Arabs was quite large. On average, about 10% of the Spanish lexicon is via Arabic, either directly or borrowings into Arabic that were brought to the Iberian Peninsula. But the food and agricultural terms...I don't know for sure, but I'd say that the ratio is more than 10%.

Edited April 24, 2007 by docoflove1974

[Gaius Octavius]

Sorry about 'invented' - just being me.

 

Dol, what do those rhombus' mean?

 

What about coffee and tea?

Edited April 25, 2007 by Gaius Octavius

[docoflove1974]

Dol, what do those rhombus' mean?

 

Ummmmmm..what rhombuses?

[Gaius Octavius]

The below.

 

I don't know about the other words off the top of my head, but the word for orange (the fruit) in the Romance languages comes from the Arabic nāranǧ, from the Persian nārang, which in turn is from the Sanskrit word nāraṅga. I don't know for sure of the history of the fruit, but I do know that the Moors 'brought back' much agriculture--both plants and techniques--that had been 'lost' since the fall of Rome.

Edited April 25, 2007 by Gaius Octavius