In today's world you can find all sorts of fast
food: hamburgers, fried chicken, pizza, Chinese, something they try to pass off as Mexican food, but rarely will you find snails on the menu but it seems that wasn't always the case. Just last month in Pompeii, archaeologists revealed what is essentially a fast food restaurant with the
remains of food still in some of the containers and one of those tasty treats was escargot. So today we're making cocleas, ancient Roman snails, and we'll take a look at what visiting one of
these Roman restaurants might have been like, and see why they had a bit of a seedy
reputation. This time on Tasting History. Now this Pompeian restaurant called a thermopolium
is not the first to be excavated. In fact there are around 90 in Pompeii and Herculaneum alone, but it is exquisitely preserved and gives us lots of clues as to what would have
been eaten on that fateful day in 79 AD. Duck, goat, fish, pig, and of course snails. Now we don't know exactly how the snails were served there probably as some sort of stew with other
ingredients but for our purposes we are going to make a recipe from the Apicius De Re Coquinaria for a very simple fried snail. Cocleas. Snails: Fry with pure salt and oil. Baste snails with silphium, garum, pepper, oil. Nice and simple. Now the snails served at the thermopolium probably didn't have
silphium, because it was a very expensive ingredient and by the time that the recipe was actually
written several hundred years later silphium was extinct, maybe. I actually did a whole episode
on that that I will link to in the description but for our purposes we will substitute with asafoetida
which has been considered a common substitute even as far back as ancient Rome. So for this recipe
what you'll need is: one to two dozen snails. Now if you have live snails that is fantastic. That's actually what this probably would have been but in a lot of places including where I live, live
snails are actually really hard to find even even out in the garden we just don't really have a lot
of snails here, so I am using canned snails that iI got at my local fine French foods provider and
even Anthony Bourdain says they pretty much taste the same so that's what we're doing. 1 teaspoon of salt. 2 tablespoons of olive oil for frying , and a quarter cup or 60 milliliters of olive oil
for basting, a half teaspoon of asafoetida, one and a half teaspoons of garum or colatura di alici,
or really any kind of fish sauc, and i'll put a link to colatura di alici and to asafoetida in the description, and one teaspoon of ground pepper. So first if you have not subscribed to Tasting
History make sure to do that before we get started and hit that little notification bell so you never
miss an episode and now let's make our baste. In a small bowl with the quarter cup of olive oil
add in the asafetida the garam and the pepper and mix it up then set it aside then put a small
pan over medium heat and add the rest of the olive oil and the salt once the oil is heated toss
in your snails so if you have live snails great just take the open part the face of the snail
i guess and put it onto the bottom of the pan but if you don't, if you are using canned snails
which is what most people are probably going to use, they've already been cooked. They've been
boiled so you're really just heating them up. Either way the process is pretty much the same. After about two minutes pour the basting liquid over the snails and let them cook for another four
or five minutes stirring every once in a while. Now while those saute, let's pour a glass of wine and imagine ourselves a trip to the thermopolium. So let's say you're living in ancient Rome. You're sitting on your couch feeling a little peckish, want a little nosh. Now if you're wealthy you would just have you know your cook whip you up some parthian chicken in the kitchen
but if you're like most people you don't have a kitchen, and you don't probably have a cook either. If you're a plebian or just don't own a villa, then you probably live in something called an insula, or an apartment building for lack of a better term, and so your only recourse is to go out to eat. Luckily just as the ground floor of my New York apartment used to have a wonderful Thai restaurant
so did the ground floors of insulae. Though not Thai restaurants usually but Roman restaurants or
thermapolia. So that term thermopolia or singular thermopolium basically means a place where hot
stuff is sold, and the term wasn't really used that often in ancient Rome itself. Archaeologists use it now to kind of describe a whole collection of eating houses. Caupona, stabila, popina, and tiberna were all manner of places that you could go get food. Some were more like fast food joints, some like a wine bar you could sit down and have a meal, and then some had rooms attached like the taberna, where you could stay over for the night. In fact the term taberna is where we get the term tavern, hm. So even if you don't like the thermopolium in your bulding, that's okay because you got options kid. You just take a little stroll down the via and before too long some proprietor will come out like a carnival barker and entice you into their establishment. And really where you end up that
evening kind of depends on what you're looking for. Both food-wise, and entertainment-wise because some of these places would offer gambling even though it was illegal or adult entertainment, not that
gambling isn't adult, but you know what I mean and we'll actually discuss that a little bit later. But when it came to the cuisine each place would kind of advertise what they had on frescoes and they
would lay it out kind of like a buffet. Like the Piccadilly when I was a kid, which I thought was a really fancy place because they had a fountain indoors and gave you little Andes mints with the
check. Turns out it was not fancy at all but I still liked it. But in ancient Rome instead of
warming trays they would use something called dolia which were terracotta containers that
would slip into the counter and in those dolia besides those foods that I mentioned earlier
archaeologists have found: oysters, chicken, nuts, dried meats bread and sheep stew. So you got a lot of options, and of course with your meal you might partake in a little bit of wine in fact at the
thermopolium discovered last month or uncovered last month they found a wine vessel that had
dried fava beans at the bottom and you're probably wondering who puts fava beans in their wine? And I'll tell you because Apicius lets us know. "To make white wine out of red wine. Put bean-meal... into the flask and stir it for a very long time The next day the wine will be white." I really want to try doing that one of these days and see if it works. Supposedly it also works with egg whites
but for some reason that actually grosses me out more than dried fava beans. Anyway another drink that you might enjoy is called conditum or spiced wine, and Apicus has a recipe for that
which says, "Spiced honey wine which keeps forever... given to people on a journey." And maybe if you're lucky you're drinking that cup of wine beside a future emperor of Rome for as Suetonius wrote of the great emperor Claudius, " Now pray who can live without a snack, and then he went on to describe
the abundance of the old taverns to whom he himself used to go for wine in earlier days." Though supposedly he ended up ordering many of those establishments closed in 41 AD, but doesn't seem to really have stuck because a few years later Cassius Dio writes of Claudius's son the emperor Nero, "He indulged in many licentious deeds both at home and throughout the city... he used to frequent the taverns and wandered about everywhere like a private citizen... although he spent practically
his whole existence amid tavern life, he forbade others to sell in taverns anything
boiled save vegetables and pea-soup ." Now before you ask no he does not go into any further detail about the prohibition of boiled foods even though I would have really liked to know
more about that, sad. But even with some high class clientele frequenting these establishments they tended to have kind of a bad reputation especially those that had rooms attached and especially
when those rooms were rented by the hour. As Seneca says, "Virtue is a lofty quality...
pleasure is low, slavish, weakly, perishable; its haunts and homes are the brothel and the
tavern. You will meet virtue in the temple the marketplace and the senate house..." How convenient that Seneca spent much of his life in the senate... hm! But it wasn't just the holier-than-thou crowd
that looked down on these public eating houses in fact the satirist Juvenal paints these places
in a rather unflattering light. In one story about the general Laternus going to an all-night tavern he says, "Caesar - send! But look for your general in some great tavern. You will find him reclining with
some common cutthroat in a medley of sailors and thieves and runaway slaves. Among executioners and cheap coffin-makers and the now silent drums of the priest of Cybele, lying drunk on his back. There there is equal liberty for all - sharing of cups - nor different couch for any, or table
set aloof from the herd." Now if you think just visiting one of these places gives you a stigma imagine what working in one does. The sixth century Code of Justinian when laying out the nuptial
policies of the elite dictates "We forbid the marriage of senators with women belonging to the classes... slaves, the daughters of slaves... actresses, and their daughters, the daughters of tavern -keepers of proprietors of houses of prostitution, and of gladiators; or women who make their bodies articles of merchandise." So the barmaid gets lumped in with prostitutes and actors. D: Now when I read these castigations of the Thermopylae I wonder if they're not being a little elitist, just as I
am when I mock Taco Bell even though I sure do love a Crunchwrap. Could the people eating in these
restaurants really be so crass? Well, lucky for us they actually left us an indication of their
nature in their own words. There is graffiti carved all over ancient Roman structures, but some of the choicest adorns the walls of the thermopolium. Now some are innocuous enough like this bill
affair from a bar near the maritime baths Some nuts...? Coins. Drinks: 14 coins; lard: two coins; bread: three coins; three meat cutlets: 12 coins; four sausages: eight coins. Total 51 coins. And another showing some patrons to be most admirable chaps, "We two dear men, friends forever were here. If you want to know our names, they are Gaius and Aulus." And if you are sensitive at all I would stop there. Now I'm not going to read the most baudy of the graffiti found around ancient Rome because it gets
pretty raunchy, but I am going to put a link in the description to where you can peruse if you are
so inclined but for the PG-13 crowd I give you these and in the voices that I imagine they were
written in. "Apelles the chamberlain with Dexter, a slave of Caesar, ate here most agreeably and had a screw at the same time." "Two friends were here. While they were, they had bad service in every way from a guy named Apaphroditus. They threw him out and spent 105 and a half sestertii most agreeably on whores." "We have wet the bed, host. I confess we have done wrong. If you want to know why, there
was no chamber pot." That is so not an excuse... Now I do love the rather pithy boast found
at the Caupona of Anthictus. "I screwed the barmaid." One of my favorites is actually a
dialogue between two mortal enemies it seems Severus: Succesus, a weaver, loves the innkeeper's slave girl named Iris. She, however, does not love him The more he begs, the less she cares. His rival
wrote this. Goodbye. Successus: Envious one, why do you get in the way? Submit to the handsomer man and one who
is being treated very wrongly and good looking. Severus: I have spoken. I have written all there is to say. You love Iris but she does not love you. So maybe some of these places less resemble the Mcdonald's and more the tavern from Tangled but in all honesty with my teeny, tiny kitchen back here it still probably beats cooking at home, this coming from the guy with a cooking show. >_> Speaking of which let's try those snails. :D So after a few minutes you can remove the snails from the heat
and either put them onto a salad or eat them plain, or stuff them back into the shells for a little
bit of culinary theatrics. Then go ahead and pour whatever sauce is left over on top and serve. And here we are cocleas, ancient Roman escargot. Look at this cool little spoon I got it's like shell
and kind of pointy at the end, so for scooping out mussels or whatever you can use a fork. Honestly, you don't even need to eat them in the shell it's more for the theater of it. It's pretty, but what you do want to make sure to do is eat them right away, because nothing is more
disgusting then cold snails. Yeah, here we go. You really get the flavor of the
snail more than you would with like a modern french escargot which really you're getting
the flavor of butter and garlic and there's nothing wrong with that, but this the other flavors
are really quite mild. I mean you can taste that interesting asafoetida flavor which is kind of
garlicky, kind of oniony, but hard to place but it's not overpowering you're getting more of
the flavor of the snail which which is interesting. there's there's a brininess to it because of
the of the garum it's not salty it's more briny. That said I would stick with the garlic
and butter of modern day escargot. I'm gonna eat most of these but I would rather go with escargot. So make sure to follow me on Instagram and Twitter and even TikTok now where every few days I
post Facts by Max, which are little historical anecdotes that usually don't have anything to do with food, and I will see you next time on Tasting History.
I loved the voice work on the reading of various graffiti haha - honestly, who downvotes these videos? I don’t get it. They’re all golden
The graffiti section was great, I always like hearing/reading about the people who are otherwise never mentioned in history books.
For those interested in more graffiti there's the Ancient Graffiti website which aims to make all graffiti from Pompeii and Herculaneum publicly accessible.
You could also check the EU's Eagle Network website for everything Roman and Greek, although they cover all inscriptions, not just graffiti.
New camera? Lighting?
Not the most complimentary, but he's still as charming as ever!
loved this!!
We made this with mushrooms, since snails aren't kosher. My husband loved them so much he was taking about it all weekend. Even my 10 month old ate the cut up pieces so voraciously that I couldn't cut them up fast enough (he also doesn't have molars, so it all came out whole the other end the next day 😆)