Parthian Chicken

History

This chicken survives in the collection known as Apicius (De re coquinaria), the anonymous Late-Antique compilation that carries the name of the 1st-century gourmet Marcus Gavius Apicius rather than his authored work. The bird is split open, arranged in a Cumana pot, and finished with a pounded sauce of pepper, lovage, a little caraway, fish sauce—the ordinary Roman seasoning—and wine, thickened with laser dissolved in warm water. That laser is the crux of the name: the recipe reaches back to silphium, the prized Cyrenaican resin harvested to extinction by around the 1st century CE, for which Romans substituted Persian asafoetida, also called laser. Food historian Sally Grainger argues the dish is called "Parthian" precisely because asafoetida, native to the mountains of Afghanistan, came to Rome through trade with its Parthian neighbours. Parthia was Rome's great eastern rival and the intermediary that controlled the overland spice and silk routes, reselling eastern exotica to Roman buyers—so the label evokes the empire that supplied the flavour more than a proven Parthian recipe. One modern cook reads it as possibly "Parthian in origin but adapted by the Romans to their taste (by adding caraway)"; whether the name marks real influence or Roman exoticizing of an eastern ingredient is unprovable, and the heavily spiced, fish-sauce-and-wine profile is thoroughly Roman elite cooking.

Ingredients

• chicken
• pepper
• lovage
• caraway
• liquamen (Roman fermented fish sauce)
• wine
• fresh laser

Instructions

1. Open and flatten the chicken; arrange it in a Cumaean dish.
2. Pound pepper, lovage and a little caraway with liquamen and wine; pour over the chicken.
3. Dissolve fresh laser in warm water, add to the chicken, cook, and serve with pepper.