Cooking Ancient Roman

For the recent meeting of the Blandford Clerical Society, I cooked some ancient Roman dishes. Most such recipes are laconic: merely a list of ingredients without quantities or method. For this lunch I interpreted aliter holus molle (Apicius On Cookery 3.15.2) as a soup. apium coques ex aqua nitrata, exprimes et concides minutatim. I chopped the celery and simmered it for 30 minutes. Keeping a third of the cooked celery to one side, I pureed the rest with a hand blender. in mortario teres piper, ligusticum, origanum, cepam, uinum, liquamen et oleum. I sliced the onions and sauteed them in olive oil until caramelised. coques in pultario et sic apium commisces. I poured the celery puree over the sauteed onions, added the chopped celery and white wine, adjusted the thickness with a little water, and seasoned with pepper, lovage, origano and nam pla sauce. The onion base furnished depth of flavour, the chopped celery texture. To accompany this soup, I made staititai/honey and sesame pizza (Athenaeus The Partying Professors 14.646b). For dessert there was pear jelly (Pliny Natural History 15.58) with a slice of honeyed pine-nut flan (Apicius On Cookery 7.13.5).