Emmer Groats or Barley Broth (Tisana)

History

This belongs to the oldest and humblest layer of Roman eating rather than to the luxury for which the collection known as Apicius is famous. Tisana is the Latin form of the Greek ptisane, a barley preparation in which the grain is steeped, husked, and simmered slowly until it yields a nourishing juice; the word carried on into the French and English 'tisane'. Its medical pedigree is ancient: Hippocrates discussed ptisane in the fifth century BCE and recommended barley for the healthy and the sick alike, and Galen, in the early second century CE, praised barley's nourishing juice and listed the plain seasonings such as oil, salt, cumin, wine, vinegar, dill, and leeks used to dress it. As barley soup it was cheap, healthful, everyday fare, closer to the ordinary Roman table than most of this cookbook's elite dishes. What the compilation does is elaborate that humble base: where the medicinal broth is little more than salt, oil, vinegar, and dill, the Apicius version enriches it with pork knuckle, a bundle of herbs, coriander, honey, defrutum, and liquamen, then finishes it with pepper, lovage, pennyroyal, and roasted cumin. It still calls for silphium, the resin harvested to scarcity by the first century CE, which marks it among the older strata of the text. The heading pairs 'alica or the broth of tisana' as interchangeable bases, alica being a crushed, hulled-grain groat. The book itself is a late compilation, likely fourth- or fifth-century CE, and carries the name of Marcus Gavius Apicius, a first-century gourmet who cannot be shown to have written it.

Ingredients

• barley (tisana) or emmer groats (alica)
• olive oil
• dill
• dry onion
• savory (satureia)
• coloefium (a pork knuckle/collar; reading uncertain)
• green coriander
• salt
• pepper, lovage, dry pennyroyal, cumin
• fried silphium (silfi frictum)
• honey
• vinegar
• defrutum (reduced grape must)
• liquamen (Roman fermented fish sauce)

Instructions

1. Soak barley/emmer overnight, wash and rub, then set over the fire.
2. When bubbling, add oil, a bundle of dill, dry onion, savory, and a pork knuckle to cook.
3. Add ground green coriander and salt for the broth, and boil well.
4. Remove the bundle; transfer the grain to a second pot so it does not scorch; work smooth and strain over the knuckle.
5. Grind pepper, lovage, dry pennyroyal, cumin, and fried silphium; add honey, vinegar, defrutum, and liquamen; return over the knuckle and simmer over low heat.