Name: Weirdest Foods From Ancient Roman Cuisine
Uploaded: 2021-05-20T05:00:04.000Z
Duration: 12 min 16 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

think of many popular and delicious dishes

like tagliatelle pasta with Bolognese sauce, chicken

like dolphin meatballs, parrot heads, and fermented fish guts.

on things most modern-day folk would shudder to even think

Today, we're going to take a look at the weirdest foods

But before we get started, be sure to subscribe

And let us know in the comments below what

other culinary topics you would like to hear about.

We're about to sink our teeth into some creepy Roman food.

For the people of the ancient Roman world,

meat was a bit of a delicacy, and it was almost exclusively

Exotic meats like peacock were even more of a rarity.

The bird was typically served by cooks trying

According to a collection of recipes and food

facts from the First Century called Apicius,

peacock was considered a first-ranked dish.

That meant it outranked foods like rabbit, lobster, chicken,

and pork in terms of its value as a luxury.

Roman elites also enjoyed the peacock's eggs,

which were also ranked highest among their counterparts.

Sterile sow's womb may not sound super appetizing to most,

This would ideally keep the animal's womb

Apicius details numerous recipes featuring this delicacy,

which is often accompanied by things like belly flesh

There were numerous ways to prepare a sow's womb.

One was to cook it in pepper, celery seed, dry mint, laser

Alternatively, a Roman chef might grill the sow's womb

after coating it in bran and then putting it into a brine.

From all this talk, I kind of do have a hankering for womb now.

One of the ancient Roman empire's most famous gourmands

was Elagabalus, who was emperor during the Third Century

said that he loved hosting fancy dinner parties.

Ancient gossip recorded in the Historia Augusta

lived to serve people the greatest delicacies.

The ancient book even states that he served his own palace

with heads of parrots, pheasants, and peacocks.

by boiling the meat in dill, salt, and vinegar, and later

adding ingredients like leeks and coriander.

be infused with spices like pepper and cumin.

Finally, the meat would be sweetened with dates

When it came to parrots, Romans didn't just eat them.

They also consider them conversation partners.

to imitate the human voice and actually converse.

He noted that "a parrot will duly salute an emperor

and pronounce the words it has heard spoken."

There's something they don't teach you in school.

If you want to frolic with parrots, bring a good Chianti.

that was stuck in the drain of an ancient restaurant.

indicated that the animal was used for food.

However, how it got to the restaurant in the first place

This is especially true given that it's the only giraffe

bone ever to be recovered from an Italian excavation.

And to think, if one plumber had just done their job,

Along with giraffes, the Romans apparently

enjoyed camel at least as an occasional delicacy.

An excavation of an ancient garbage dump in Rome

Subtitles ListPlay Video

Weirdest Foods From Ancient Roman Cuisine

stuff

apparently

ingredient

ancient