The next time you bite into a pork-and-leek sausage, remember to thank the Romans. Show some gratitude to the Celts, too, for inventing the bacon sandwich. These are the sorts of foodie facts you learn when squatting by a clay pit fire in a Cornish field, chatting to Jacqui Wood. An archaeologist, Wood has studied the history of British food from the Stone Age up to the 1970s.
As she stokes the embers and stirs a pot of “Roman army lentil stew” (a delicious mix of green lentils, red wine, onion, cumin, dill, thyme, oregano and parsley) hanging in a cauldron over the fire, she explains why Britons should remember their ancestors when they tuck into their food.
“The Celts loved their ham and bacon,” says Wood, who hopes her new book of historic recipes will inspire people “to hold themed dinner parties from history”. “The first Celts came from the Hallstatt region of Austria, where the salt mines are, and they spread a taste for salted pork and lamb. They liked simple foods, like hearty stews, although they didn’t have too many herbs. They had a cinnamon-like herb called bog myrtle, but it was the Romans who introduced many of the herbs and vegetables that we now know and love.”
When the Romans finally succeeded in invading the British Isles in AD43, they brought with them a sense of culinary adventure.
Among them was a celebrated gourmand called Marcus Apicius who was said to have set sail to what is now Libya upon hearing that enormous prawns had been caught off its coast, only to discover that they were no larger than those in his native Campania.
Romans loved their gourmet luxuries so much, says Wood, that they brought most of their favourites from home. As a result, a taste quickly developed across Britain for cabbage — the Romans’ favourite vegetable — as well as various root vegetables and onions.
Roman trade routes to southern Asia meant that spices such as pepper, nutmeg and ginger were introduced to native palates for the first time. (Once the Romans left Britain in AD410, such spices wouldn’t return until the time of the Crusades about six centuries later. The Vikings had a particularly bland palate, according to Wood.) The Romans even transported amphorae filled with a sauce made from fermented fish entrails called “garum”, which they used in place of salt to enhance their meals — 2000 years before the British discovered a taste for Thailand’s nam pla fish sauce.
“The beef should be ready now,” says Wood, as she starts to uncover a pile of hot stones in a shallow clay pit that have been packed around a joint of beef encased in dough for three hours. The dough is rock hard and charred, but inside the beef is tender and bathed in its own natural gravy. It’s probably best described as a Celtic version of beef en croute.
On the adjacent fire, another meal known as “bread cups” has been baking, shaped around hot stones. The Celts used these bowls of unleavened bread to hold a variety of fillings, including — as I discover when Wood hands me a sample — a tasty mixture of smoked fish, leek, hazelnuts and cream. It is uncannily similar in taste and look to New England clam chowder served in bread bowls.
Wood’s demonstration of ancient cookery is fascinating, owing both to its culinary revelations and its insight into often ignored fragments of British history. But she admits it’s not a complete picture: “I have chosen the recipes to suit modern tastes. There was no point, for example, including stuffed cow’s udders, or fish stomach stuffed with chopped liver, as were enjoyed in the medieval period.” — © Guardian News & Media 2009