Cooking Roman Style

One of the most popular Education room activities we had this summer was a table filled with spices and oils that the Romans could have used. I swear, there were a dozen people and two camcorders around the table at one point! If you want to experience the tastes and smells of the Romans, it’s to set up at home.

A Roman Mortatium and Some Roman Herbs and Spices

Start by gathering herbs and spices which the Romans used - things like honey, lovage, rosewater, wine, olive oil, black pepper, mustard seed, garlic, sage, mint, coriander, thyme and salt. You probably have a lot of these in your cupboards already.

Romans mixed their spices (and their foods) a bit differently than we do today - how many recipes have YOU seen which call for you to pulp lettuce, then mix it into a batter to deep-fry it?*

Romans also used a few things which Western cooks usually don’t - the closest we have today for their fermented fish sauce, Garum, is Thai fish sauce (Nam Pla). Man, is it strong smelling! A few of their ingredients, like silphium, went extinct due to over harvesting.

Close your eyes and smell the ingredients you’ve gathered. Can you imagine a Roman kitchen? They would’ve grilled, boiled, fried and baked their foods, using hot coals in ovens. Many poor people would have only eaten food from takeaways - not everyone could afford a kitchen.

If you’re really ambitious, you could try cooking a Roman recipe! Apicius wrote a book of Roman Cookery, and experienced cooks may be able to get something out of his recipes. You can find translations here. Be warned, Apicius wasn’t too keen on writing down times and temperatures, just ingredients and a sketchy ‘how-to’ guide.

Lots of people have made modern versions of Roman recipes - I’d recommend checking out Mark Grant’s book Roman Cookery: Ancient Recipes for Modern Kitchens, or The Classical Cookbook by Andrew Dalby and Sally Grainger. Who knows? You might find a new-old favourite!


* There’s a recipe for Seasoned Fritters made out of lettuce on page 62 in Mark Grant’s book, Roman Cookery.

 
Barbara

In the Education Office…

You might not be able to tell from looking at the Baths buildings, but there is a heck of a lot of behind-the-scenes space. A lot of it is storage, but a lot of the work done in the offices might come as a surprise to anyone thinking all museum workers hunker down around boxes of old stuff, and mostly clean old pots with toothbrushes all day.

On any given day at the Roman Baths education office we’re not just working on Roman Baths programs, but also things for the Fashion Museum and the Victoria Art Gallery. Definitely a lot of fun - and as you can see, the Learning Apprentice, Greg, agrees!

Greg in Family Event Hat

The tissue paper, card and ribbon hat which Greg is tolerantly modelling for us in our office was made at the Fashion Museum as part of an activity called Flower Power. We explored how flowers have been used in fashion throughout the years, and made our own stylish flower creations.

Family in Laurels during Family Event at the Roman Baths

Everything we do as an activity has to tie in to what you see on display, or the themes which we cover in the museum – still, when you’ve got a museum dedicated to the Romans, a museum dedicated to Fashion and a museum dedicated to Art? I don’t think we’ll ever run out of things to do but until we do, our office will remain filled with Model Magic, Pritt stick, strange spices and lots and lots of pretty paper.


Barbara

Public Programmes at the Roman Baths

If you’ve visited the Roman Baths anytime in these past ten years, and managed to drag your eyes away from the Great Bath long enough to look up - you may have seen a big, arching window. If you were there at the right time, there might have been wide-eyed kids looking back at you. That’s our Education Room.

An Inside View of the Education Room (We're usually much busier!)

Now, seeing as how we’re posting this blog at the end of the summer, you might be wondering - ‘what the heck are they doing writing about volunteering in education now? School’s not in session!’ This is very true. However, as Mark Twain once said, ‘you should never let school get in the way of your education.’

Throughout the summer, we ran loads of hands-on Roman events in our Education Room. Visitors got to hold real Roman tesserae (mosaic stones), count out replica Roman coins, pick up Roman tiles and bricks, smell and touch Roman cooking ingredients, and make their own Votive offerings to give to the goddess of healing, Sulis Minerva.

I think that the best part about the Roman Baths is that they are real. You get to stand where Romans stood, touch things they made, and really picture what it was like in your head a bit. Being encouraged to explore using all your senses? It’s magic.

One of the biggest things we try to do with our public programme is to get you, the visitor, to put yourself in that place a little more. The more personal you let it be, the more it means to you.

Next time you’re in a museum (any museum, not just ours) try focusing on one object. Think about what it would have sounded like or what it would have smelled like. If you can’t touch it, imagine what the texture would have felt like, or how warm it would be next to your skin. Just experience it!

 
Barbara