Help Stefan CampaignAncient Foods
When I talk about 'Ancient Foods' I should really define precisely what I'm talking about. In this respect I mean the cookery of pre-literate societies; focussing on north-western Europe and the British Isles in particular. Effectively this is the cookery of the Iron Age, the Bronze age and of the Celts.
But... I hear you ask. If these peoples were pre-literate how do we know anything at all about their foods? Some of the information comes from later Greeek and Roman writers (though their writings about the so-called 'Barbarian' peoples is always suspect. We also know a fair amoun about the types of food consumed from archaeological evidence. The main ingredients of various meals are known, what we don't know are the proportions. Though, in common with modern stone-age peoples the proportions of the various ingredients used in the food probably depended on what was available at the time.
We also know something of the foods consumed from varoius contemporary works of art (especially in the Celtic world). As a result, though any interpretation of 'ancient' cookery can only be an approximation it's still possible to present to modern diners something that would be very close to the ancient original. We also know that many of the hedgerow foods such as berries and fungi that we have today were available in the ancient world and based on the cooking skills and utensils of the age it's possible to take these 'hedgerow foods' and create something that may well have been consumed in ancient times. As an aid to identification this site provides a pictorial guide to wild foods an their uses.
As a result it's possible to derive sufficient recipes that someone coult recreate a 'feast from antiquity'.
Like all the main period sections on this site the recipes in this 'Ancient Foods' section are broken down into meal components. Simply click on the meal component on the left-hand column (eg 'Main Courses') to be taken to a page that lists all the recipes for that particular element of a meal.
You can also easily find any of the recipes on this site using the recipe search page.
I am also making a number of conversion tables available for converting between Volumes, Mass/Weight and Temperatures.
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