Translated from french (please notify us of errors)
Lentils have been cultivated since the dawn of agriculture in Mesopotamia, around 10,000 years ago. Thanks to their high nutritional value, particularly their rich protein content, these leguminous seeds formed a staple food for many ancient societies: Egyptians, Jews, Greeks and Romans. The biblical episode of Esau is well known: returning famished to the family tent, he trades his birthright for a dish of lentils.[1]
But lentils did more than simply satisfy hunger. Pliny the Elder also attributes medicinal virtues to them: they were said to heal ulcers of all kinds and to ensure a balanced temperament in those who consumed them.[2]
A substitute for meat among the poorer classes, lentils were often looked down upon by the wealthy. They were probably not considered a sufficiently refined dish by Apicius, who records only three lentil recipes.[3]
At once essential to ancient diets and too commonplace to attract gastronomic interest, lentils came to embody a complex and ambivalent symbolism.
The Underworld and wealth
Lentils are associated with mourning and with the god of the Underworld, Pluto in Roman tradition. Yet this divine name is of Greek origin and means “the rich one” (Πλούτων), since the god was also thought to preside over underground wealth, gold and precious metals hidden beneath the earth. In the same way, their flattened shape could evoke that of coins.
It is often claimed that the Romans customarily exchanged a small purse of lentils at the calends of January as a good-luck charm symbolising fertility, abundance and wealth. While the exchange of small gifts of good omen (strenae) is indeed well attested in Latin literature, notably in Ovid[4], lentils themselves are not mentioned among these gifts, unlike green branches, dates, dried figs, honey or coins.
The association between lentils and good fortune nevertheless persisted in several Mediterranean regions. In Provence, for example, seeds are traditionally germinated, and the young shoots later decorate the table as a sign of abundance for the year to come.
Cotechino con lenticchie
It is above all in Italy, and particularly in the north of the country, that lentils have retained their aura as a symbol of good fortune. They are an essential feature of the table on New Year’s Eve or New Year’s Day, often served with the famous cotechino or zampone, pork sausages typical of the Modena region.
As the Italian saying goes: Lenticchie a capodanno, fortuna tutto l’anno![4]
[2] Pliny the Elder, Natural History, Book XVIII, 31: invenio apud auctores aequanimitatem fieri vescentibus ea, “I find among authors that lentils give equality of temper to those who eat them” and Book XXII, 70.
[3] Apicius, De Re Coquinaria, Book V, Chapter 2: Lentils with cardoon stock (183), lentils with chestnuts (184), another lentil recipe (185).
[4] Ovid, Fasti, 1.185–196.
[5] “(Eating) lentils at New Year’s, (brings) good luck for the whole year!”
Other articles in English from the Nunc est bibendum blog
