Translated from french (please notify us of errors)
Obélix had his wild boars¹, the Romans their pigs. Omnivorous animals requiring little upkeep, they were widespread in the countryside, including on modest farms.
Professor Paolo Poccetti, a linguistics scholar at the University of Rome 2–Tor Vergata, describes the pig as “an animal at the centre of the (Roman) world”. He notes that classical Latin had eleven terms for naming the pig: depending on whether it was young or old, male or female, castrated or not²… And that it was the only animal specifically raised to end up in the butcher’s shop. In short, a great deal of attention for a single purpose: feeding the Romans.
Stuffed, in stew, on the spit, whole, brined, fresh, as sausage—there were, as there are today, countless ways of preparing the beast to satisfy every palate, every purse, and every god, since it was the most common sacrificial meat.
In practically every work dealing with ancient cuisine, in the “pork” chapter, one will find more or less this quotation from the first-century CE author and naturalist Pliny the Elder:
“No animal provides more food for gluttony. Its flesh offers about fifty flavours, whilst that of others has but one.”³
They ate the womb and the teats
To taste these fifty flavours, no part of the animal could be neglected: snout, ears, brain, stomach, liver, feet, tail—nothing was set aside. Even less so than today, and all the more if it was a female. There, it was quite literally fifty shades of sow.
From her, they even ate the womb and the teats. And don’t go thinking for a moment that these were poor cuts reserved for times of crisis. Teats (sumina) and wombs (vulvae) graced the most prestigious tables of Roman society. Does this leave you perplexed? Let us give the floor to Oribasius, a fourth-century CE Greek physician who notably treated the Roman emperor Julian. He waxes lyrical about teats:
“The glands of the udders offer, when they contain milk, something of the sweetness of that liquid; and it is precisely for this reason that these glands, when they are full of milk, especially those of sows, constitute a dish much sought after by gourmets.”4
As for vulvae or wombs, Apicius offers six recipes: four seasoned with pepper and garum, one grilled, and one as a dumpling⁵. Gastronomes argued over which vulva was best: the majority, like Pliny, swore only by the womb of a virgin sow, reputed to be more tender, whilst others, like the poet Martial, preferred wombs that had already been used, as they were considered more flavourful.
According to Pliny⁶, Apicius had invented a recipe that consisted of force-feeding a sow with figs, giving her honeyed wine to drink, and killing her without warning. The liver subjected to this treatment was, tradition tells us, delicious.
Never short of inventiveness, Apicius also proposed stuffing the animal’s stomach with its brain⁷:
“Fill the stomach whilst leaving room so that it doesn’t burst during cooking”.
Through being so often stuffed, the sow apparently acquired the qualifier troia, in reference to the Trojan horse⁸.
And what of male pigs? Apparently, they fared somewhat better. There was no question, for instance, of eating their testicles, as they supposedly had⁹ a repulsive odour…
1 Obélix is a character from the French comic series Astérix, famous for his insatiable appetite for wild boar. In reality, the Gauls primarily ate domesticated livestock rather than wild game, contrary to the popular image from the comics.
2 Sus; aper; porcus; verres; maialis; porca; porcetra; scrofa; porcus lactens, sacris, delic(ul)us.
3 Pliny the Elder, Natural History, VIII, LXXVII (209): neque alio ex animali numerosior materia ganeae: quinquaginta prope sapores, cum ceteris singuli.
4 Oribasius, Medical Collections, 32: οἱ δὲ ἐν τοῖς τιτθοῖς, ὅταν ἔχωσιν γάλα, καὶ τῆς ἐκείνου τι γλυκύτητος ἐμφαίνουσι, καὶ διὰ τοῦτο περισπούδαστόν ἐστι τοῖς λιχνοῖς ἔδεσμα πλήρεις γάλακτος οἱ ἀδένες οὕτοι γευόμενοι, καὶ μάλιστα ἐπι τῶν ὑῶν.
5 Apicius, De re coquinaria, VII, I (252, 253, 254, 255, 257) & liber II, III (59).
6 Pliny the Elder, Natural History, VIII, LXXVII (209).
7 Apicius, De re coquinaria, VII, VII (287): reples aqualiculum sic ut laxamentum habeat, ne dissiliat in coctura.
8 The expression porcus troianus is attested only once, in Martial (Saturnalia, III, 13, 13). Today, troia means —in very vulgar Italian— a prostitute.
9 Oribasius, Medical Collections, 32.
Sources
- Paolo Poccetti, Un animal au centre du monde. Le cochon dans l’Antiquité italique et romaine, Schedae, Université de Caen, 2009.
- Jacques André, L’alimentation et la cuisine à Rome, ed. Belles Lettres, 2009, p.136-138.
- Antonietta Dosi, Giuseppina Pisani Sartorio, Ars culinaria, Donzelli editore, 2012.
Other articles in English from the Nunc est bibendum blog
