And another simple summery dish, this time watermelon with a sweet and sour dressing. Following are the Latin and English versions, once again from my copy of Apicius: A Critical Edition with an Introduction and English Translation by Christopher Grocock and Sally Grainger, which I have to say is a damned fine edition of Apicius, with an awful lot of helpful appendices on ingredients &c.
VII. PEPONES ET MELONES. piper puleium mel uel passum liquamen acetum. interdum et silfi accedit.
3.7. LONG AND ROUND SWEET MELONS: pepper, pennyroyal, honey or passum, liquamen, vinegar. Sometimes silphium is added.
I had just sort of assumed that melons like watermelon were New World things, since they look (to this non-botanist's eye anyway) related to the squashes like zucchini and butternut; but no. Poking around on the internet I fell down the rabbit hole of JSTOR to find Melons and Watermelons in the Classical Era by Alfred C. Andrews published in Osiris, Vol 12 (1956), which article says that there are even representations of melons in paintings from Herculaneum and Pompeii (although poking through some books and google images I couldn't find them, alas). According to Andrews watermelons are native to southern Africa, while cantaloupes and muskmelons are native to Asia and Africa; the ancient Egyptians had them, which must have been very welcome in that climate, and from there they spread to Greece and then Rome. I think that's pretty cool (but then I am a dork; witness this blog.)
As usual the "recipe" is just a list of ingredients with no proportions; it looked like it could reasonably be a vinaigrette dressing to pour over the melon pieces, so that's what I did.
This recipe uses some ingredients that are very typical of Roman food while very unusual to modern tastes, so I'll explain (and I really shouldn't take any credit for these explanations as they are all cribbed from Grocock and Grainger).
First, passum is a very sweet raisin wine; I don't drink so don't know much about wines, but I hear it is a little tricky to come by. But since the recipe gives honey as an alternative, I used that.
Liquamen is the famous fermented fish sauce. Grocock and Grainger devote an entire section of the appendix to liquamen and garum, concluding that garum (the more familiar name to modern readers) is a higher quality table condiment, often made with fish blood, while liquamen was the more common version made from whole fish and used in cooking (and hopefully I have got that straight). Luckily Thai fish sauce is really quite close to liquamen and readily available, though it's probably rather saltier than liquamen.
Silphium is the famous extinct herb/resin which was greatly loved by the Romans; as it went extinct in classical times they had already figured out substitutes such as its relative asafoetida, which I have some of, but have never opened because frankly I'm a little scared of the stuff. It's also called 'devil's dung', after all. But that was optional anyway, and given that I'm still a modern American and not acclimated to Roman cuisine just yet, I took the coward's route and left it out.
Now, pennyroyal is perfectly well-known in modern times; there is, however, some controversy about its toxicity (it has been implicated in some deaths), so I went with its common relative mint. Which, and I feel very silly for this, I bought fresh. I have plenty of mint in my garden (if you have any mint in your garden you have plenty of mint) but it's chocolate mint, and I didn't think that was going to work. So I bought freakin' mint.
My original guess at proportions:
2 cups sliced watermelon
2 tablespoons cider vinegar
1 teaspoon honey
1/2 teaspoon liquamen (Thai fish sauce)
10 peppercorns, ground
10 mint leaves, shredded (about 1 tablespoon)
Put the watermelon in a bowl; whisk the remaining ingredients in another bowl and pour over the watermelon.
I'm definitely on the fence on this one. On the one hand it had plenty of interesting contrast—the heat of the pepper vs. the coolness of the melon, the sour vinegar vs. the sweet honey, and the salt of the liquamen also balancing out the sweetness. But it's hard to tell. I don't know if I just don't have the hang of Roman food, or if the proportions need tweaking, or if maybe I just don't like it. I even went pretty light (I thought) on the liquamen because after all that stuff kind of smells like wet dog to me. It was also really really peppery (and a bit heavy on the salt from the liquamen come to think of it). I think maybe I should try it again, halving the liquamen and pepper while leaving the rest as it is. Also I think the dressing would have benefited from sitting overnight in the fridge to come together a bit.
I guess this one gets a :|
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