Parthian Chicken
Origin: Rome, Italy
Source: Apicius, 400
History
*Pullum Parthicum* survives in Book VI of the collection known as Apicius, two recipes before its Numidian neighbour. The bird is split open from the tail and laid out flat in a square dish. Pepper, lovage and a little caraway are pounded together, moistened with *liquamen* and let down with wine; the chicken goes into a Cumana pot with the seasoning poured over it, laser is dissolved in warm water and added, and the whole is cooked and served with pepper strewn on top.
The caraway is worth noticing, because it is unusual in this book and it is the detail most often read as marking the dish out as something other than plain Roman cooking. So is the laser: the recipe reaches back to silphium, the Cyrenaican resin Romans prized, for which asafoetida — native to the mountains of Afghanistan and reaching Rome through Parthian intermediaries — was the substitute. That trade route is the likeliest reason for the name, and it points to the empire that supplied the flavour rather than to a proven Parthian recipe.
An earlier version of this note put that last reading in quotation marks and attributed it to "one modern cook." An anonymous attribution cannot be checked against anybody, so the quotation has been removed; the caraway it turned on is on the page and cited above.
Whether the label marks real Parthian influence or Roman exoticising of an eastern ingredient is unprovable either way, and the heavily spiced, fish-sauce-and-wine profile is thoroughly Roman. The account of silphium's extinction, and of Parthia's control of the overland routes, we learned from popular reference and food-writing sources, and we were unable to locate the evidence they rest on.
Ingredients
- chicken
- pepper
- lovage
- caraway
- liquamen (Roman fermented fish sauce)
- wine
- fresh laser
Instructions
- Open and flatten the chicken; arrange it in a Cumaean dish.
- Pound pepper, lovage and a little caraway with liquamen and wine; pour over the chicken.
- Dissolve fresh laser in warm water, add to the chicken, cook, and serve with pepper.