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Weird Ancient Rome: 100 Recipes Rome Actually Ate (And You Might Too)
Paperback
Series: Weird Cookbooks
Food WritingAncient RomeItalian Cooking
Publisher: Independently Published
Published: Sep 17 2026
Pages: 132
Weight: 0.71
Height: 0.28 Width: 8.50 Depth: 11.00
Language: English
The Romans ate lying down, put fish sauce in their desserts, and thought pepper belonged in wine. This book takes them seriously.
Weird Ancient Rome is 100 recipes from the Roman table, written so a modern kitchen can actually cook them. Apicius is cited throughout, and every recipe carries a sourcing tag so you always know what you are eating: Documented for dishes attested in the ancient sources, Reconstructed for dishes rebuilt from fragments and period technique, Inspired-by for dishes written in the Roman idiom rather than copied from a page. Nothing here is passed off as older than it is.
Nothing is left unobtainable, either. A Sourcing Key explains where Roman ingredients come from now, and a Substitution Index gives a workable modern stand-in for everything a home cook cannot buy - garum, defritum, laser, and the birds that are no longer legal to put on a table.
Dishes you will actually want to make:
- Libum - the honey cheesecake Romans baked as a temple offering
- Moretum - a garlic, herb and fresh cheese spread that still earns its place on a board
- Minutal ex Praecoquis - pork stewed with apricots, honey and pepper
- Conditum Paradoxum - spiced honeyed wine, and the ingredient list really is a paradox
- Patina de Piris - a baked pear custard with pepper and wine in it
- Isicia Omentata - Roman spiced meat patties
- Dulcia Domestica - dates stuffed with nuts and finished in honey
- Glires Farsi - stuffed dormice, with a substitution that keeps you out of trouble
The book runs in seven parts: Strange Proteins, Sauces and Condiments, Jellied and Molded Dishes, Eggs and Patinae, Spiced Wines and Drinks, Sweets, and Seafood and Snails. Read it straight through and it is a tasting journey across the Roman table. Open it at random and it is dinner.
Every recipe gives a yield, a time and its sourcing tag. A Basics chapter covers the few techniques the rest of the book leans on - reducing must to defritum, building a garum a modern kitchen can make, getting a patina to set. Sources and Further Reading is there for anyone who wants to keep going after the plates are cleared. One black-and-white line illustration accompanies each recipe.
Cook one dish and you have made dinner. Cook six and you have thrown a banquet, which was always the Roman point.
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