Julian Porridge (Emmer Groats with Brains and Meat)

History

Before Rome baked bread, it ate porridge. Puls — a pottage of husked emmer or spelt (far) boiled in water — was remembered as the aboriginal food of the Romans, and ancient writers made the point directly: Varro called porridge the most ancient diet, and Pliny the Elder held that early Romans lived on puls, not bread, for generations. The dish was so identifying that Greek and comic writers mocked Romans as pultiphagi, "porridge-eaters" — a jibe Plautus already uses. It kept a sacred role long after bread arrived, surviving in offerings and archaic rites. This recipe, given in the collection known as Apicius — a later anonymous compilation (c. 4th–5th c. CE) carrying the 1st-century gourmet's name — shows the other end of that social range. The base is still emmer groats (alica), but they are enriched with two cooked brains and a half-pound of meat pounded as if for isicia (forcemeat), then seasoned with pepper, lovage, and fennel seed, moistened with wine and liquamen — the everyday Roman fish sauce — and worked smooth "so that it looks like a sauce." It is peasant grain reimagined as elite dining. Quantities beyond the half-pound are sparse, as is normal for this terse text.

Ingredients

• emmer groats (alica; hulled emmer wheat)
• olive oil
• brains
• lean meat (pork)
• pepper
• lovage (ligusticum)
• fennel seed
• liquamen (Roman fermented fish sauce)
• wine

Instructions

1. Soak cleaned emmer groats, cook, and bring to a boil; add oil and, when thickened, work smooth.
2. Pound two cooked brains with a half-pound of meat worked into forcemeat, and put in the pot.
3. Grind pepper, lovage, and fennel seed; moisten with liquamen and a little wine, and add over the brains and meat.
4. Once well boiled, blend with the broth; gradually season the groats, stirring and smoothing until sauce-like.