Barren Sow's Womb (Four Dressings)

History

This recipe sits in the seventh book of the collection known as Apicius, the book of gourmet dishes, and it belongs to the Late-Antique compilation (c. 4th-5th c. CE) that carries the name of the 1st-century gourmet Marcus Gavius Apicius rather than being his authored work. That book records the tastes of the wealthiest Romans, for whom a sow's womb ranked as prized eating alongside flamingo and dormice. The text gives four quick dressings for a barren sow's womb (vulva sterilis), each built on garum, the everyday Roman fish sauce, and sharpened with pepper, vinegar, and honey-and-herb mixtures; the first calls for laser of Cyrene or of Parthia, meaning the resin of silphium or, once true silphium grew scarce, its costly Persian substitute asafoetida. Roman gourmets graded wombs finely: Pliny the Elder held that the womb of a sow that had miscarried, which he names eiecticia, was better than one that had littered, while food writers report the sterile womb was prized as especially tender and rich. Such cuts, one modern food historian notes, 'graced the most prestigious tables of Roman society', and an older translation of Apicius calls the vulva 'a favorite dish with the ancients, considered a great delicacy'. Classicists still revisit these four sautes as a vivid window onto the reach of elite Roman appetite.

Ingredients

• sow's womb (barren)
• laser (silphium/asafoetida), Cyrenaican or Parthian
• vinegar
• liquamen (Roman fermented fish sauce)
• pepper
• celery seed
• dried mint
• laser root
• honey
• spiced wine (conditum)

Instructions

1. First dressing: blend Cyrenaican or Parthian laser with vinegar and liquamen and serve over the womb.
2. Second dressing: a sauce of pepper, celery seed, dried mint, laser root, honey, vinegar and liquamen.
3. Third dressing: serve with pepper and liquamen, adding Parthian laser.
4. Fourth dressing: serve with pepper, liquamen and a little spiced wine (conditum).