We recently explored the world of
Roman cuisine through the lens of its Fast Food restaurants. This involved
reconstructing these shops from the ground up, browsing through their menus, and
taking a seat with their customers. As a part of that process I got perhaps a bit
too sucked in and started to design my very own Fast Food chains. In this episode I wanted to
further develop my time travelling business plans by seeing if it would be possible to take the
ancient world by storm with the introduction of our own modern classic: the hamburger. However,
so as not to disrupt the time-continuum we will be limiting ourselves to available ingredients from
the period and see what a true Roman Hamburger would have looked like with only what we would
have available on hand. In these endeavours we will be joined by our ancient cooking ambassador,
Max Miller from tasting history who has already been hard at work bringing back countless
recipes from the past. Let’s get into it. a big thanks to one dream for sponsoring this
video they've actually been one of our longest backers under the previous name of the great
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the material that you are most interested in We will frame our video by breaking
down the elements of a modern burger. This entails four critical parts: the buns,
the patty, the toppings, and the condiments. Per the International Time Traveller’s Code:
Chapter 1, Part 2, Article 5, Section 133, Item A: “Whosoever shall travel to a preceding
era shall be limited to the use of items from that era as dictated by the corresponding
section of ITTC Table 125.1” ITTC 125.133(A) Simply put, we won’t be allowed to use things
like tomatoes, ketchup, or shuggered buns. That being said, my attorney has assured me that
we are NOT limited to the construction of a boring forgettable burger. Rather our experiment will be
of a class C variety. As such we will indeed be allowed to alter the minds of those in the
past with a burger so great that it would impress Caligula himself. Alright, so with those
disclaimers out of the way let’s get started. The first step would be the buns. The Romans were well acquainted with
bread: it was the major staple of the diet of most poorer Romans, a fact made
famous by the existence of the grain dole. Bakers were everywhere to turn that
grain into bread for a small fee, and depending on how much you paid them, the bread
could turn out anywhere between a beautiful white loaf and grainy hardtack. Some breads were
made with honey, with cheese, or even with meats - some even were made as we might know a
burger today, sprinkling sesame seeds on top. There would have been a wide variety to choose
from. But for our purposes we will need to find a suitably light bread as the bun for our burger.
Luckily the Romans had exactly that. Galen for example mentions a type of “bread light enough to
float on water.” It was generally made by sifting out the finest flour, making a dough with milk,
and baking it at a medium temperature, achieving a bread that was more yellow inside and quite airy.
It would, by definition, be more expensive than a standard bread that most people would consume, but
for this burger, no expense ought to be spared! In addition to make this truly authentic for our
purposes you would also want to add sesame seeds towards the tail end of the baking process
using a brushing of egg whites, oil, or milk. Finally the bun could then be sliced and toasted.
We would generally do so with butter. However such instructions might be shocking to your
Roman moralists. Pliny for instance notes that butter was something that was beloved by
“barbarian” peoples and was only used by Romans as an ointment for babies. To please this crowd
and to give things a certainly more “Roman” taste you’d therefore toast the bread using olive
oil. However there's nothing stopping us from showing the Romans the errors of their ways by
making a buttery, golden-brown bun of the gods. For some discussion on ancient Roman breads I’ll pass you over to Max who has
had experience in this field. The next step of our reconstruction
will be the creation of the beef patty The Romans were huge fans of beef in general, and raising cows was considered both honourable
- being a traditional sort of manual labour - and extremely profitable. This fact is best stated
by our favourite curmudgeon of the era, Cato the Elder, who wrote intensively on agriculture.
Besides gifting us an entire book on cabbage, he also left us with this magnificent
quote, preserved by Cicero: “Of this last kind of comparison is that quote
from the elder Cato, who, when asked what was the most profitable thing to be done on an estate,
replied, “To feed cattle well.” “What second best?” “To feed cattle moderately well.” “What
third best?” “To feed cattle, though but poorly.” “What fourth best?” “To plough the land.” And when
he who had made these inquiries asked, “What is to be said of a job in banking?” Cato replied,
“What is to be said of making profit by murder?” Cato re-emphasizes this in his instructions for
the feeding of cattle - which he puts immediately next to his advice for the feeding of slaves
(the cattle are fed better). Needless to say, the Romans took great stock and pride in their
beef, and it was only logical that they had a significant supply. That being said, they did not
look fondly on people who consumed an excessive amount of beef: Galen claims that people who did
so were susceptible to cancer, scabies, malaria, leprosy, depression, wasting disease, and dropsy.
While recipes for more modern beef patties don’t survive - though they very well may have existed
- Apicius records two very similar recipes when discussing brain sausages and omentata. These
sausages and...well...patties, frankly, were generally made from pork, which was a far more
common meat for the common man. We aren’t gonna be looking at what would be common, though: a true
Roman burger for a true Roman is what we need. Therefore we will be preparing the base of
our burger by grabbing some choice beef, cutting it into smaller bits, and
grinding it up with a mortar and pestle. However, beef isn’t the only
thing that goes into these. When making burger patties, you need to mix the
meat with eggs to make it all hold together. Luckily for us, eggs were an exceptionally
popular and common ingredient back in antiquity. Afterall chickens were quite ubiquitous and
were even an important part of Roman warmaking, see our video on The Case of the
Sacred Chicken Killer to learn more. But the Romans didn’t just eat chicken eggs. Duck
eggs were popular, as were quail and dove eggs. For the wealthier sort, ostrich and peacock
eggs were not unknown. Seasoning our patty wouldn’t be too particularly difficult either:
garlic and onion were used universally, from the lowly tabernae to Caesar’s own table. Drying
and powdering them with a mortar and pestle would be no problem. And, by the middle of the first
century AD, pepper was used almost as widely. Thanks to the immense number of imports
from India, the price wasn’t even so bad either! Historians generally assume that pepper
was cheap enough for commoners to afford, and salt was everywhere - there was a salt mine outside
of the city of Rome itself. However, because this is a Roman burger, we might not be able to resist
just skip the salt and mix in some garum with the beef patty. Garum was extremely salty and often
could substitute for salt itself - especially when it was made with seawater. And as we know
every good Roman dish needs to be made with garum. And bam, just like that, we’ve got the
2nd major element of our Roman hamburger ready to go. Just flatten it out
and hit the grill when ready. I’ll again pass you back to Max for his
experience making these sorts of Roman patties. So now we have a somewhat recognizable
bun and patty. How about the toppings? First, we’ll have to note a most crippling of
limitations; Tomatoes are nowhere to be found in the Mediterranean at this time since they would
only later be imported from the Americas. We will therefore have to omit sliced tomatoes and any
derivatives like ketchup. With that being said, let’s begin with the most popular hamburger
toppings that one could readily find. On the produce side of things would be lettuce.
It was an incredibly popular leafy green which had originally been cultivated in Egypt before
being spread to places like Greece and Rome. Pliny describes the huge variety of lettuce
types which existed in his day along with all their qualities. According to the
ancient writer, it was a marvelous food, healthy in a number of ways, that promoted the
body’s production of blood. He even gives credit to lettuce for saving Augustus’ life during an
illness. Finding some should be no problem at all. Next up would be onions. These too should be quite
readily available as they were heavily integrated into Roman cuisine. Nothing to do but get a fresh
batch and chop up some slices. After this we might search for some pickles. Again these would be easy
to come by. The Romans had a history of preserving all kinds of vegetables with vinegar and were
big fans of cucumbers. Pliny notes that Tiberius ate them twice a day and even had greenhouses
stocked with them so that he’d be able to eat them year-round. The pickles for our burgers
though may have had a slightly sweeter flavor than we are used to as it appears the Romans were
fond of steeping the seeds in milk and honey. Another topping we could
seek out would be mushrooms. On this front though it might be best to err on
the side of caution and skip this ingredient. That’s because there was literally
no quality control in the Roman world and taking the word of a merchant that all of
his mushrooms were safe for human consumption might be...risky to say the least. Rather than
being farmed, they were generally foraged in fields and forests, and would not have had the
same standards of cultivation that we do today. We can now move on to the last two toppings
which will be key to making my favorite kind of hamburger; the bacon cheeseburger. The bacon
in this case would be an easy one to find as pork was a mainstay of the Roman diet and was
typically the preferred option over beef. Almost every part of the animal was consumed
including even brains and sow vulvas. As an indication of its popularity, legionary camps can
often be identified by the exceptionally large number of pork bones found in their garbage dumps.
Therefore bacon should be readily available to us no matter where we set up shop in the empire
from sweltering Syria to fog shrouded Britain. Last but not least we have the final topping
of cheese. Just like the Italians of today, ancient Romans loved their cheeses. They ate an
enormous variety and were extremely well versed in its production. In fact it seems that the Romans
were the first to turn cheese making into a grand industry. Pliny claims that the best cheeses came
from a region of what is now southeastern France, but warns that they were very delicate and
had to be eaten fresh. He also suggests that one should preserve cheese in thyme and
vinegar to add flavor and extend its longevity. Our primary source on Roman cheeses, though,
is Columella who devotes a full page on the production process. This passage is the
largest surviving Roman text on the subject. It gives a hint of some additional details like
how cheesemakers often experimented with flavoured rennets, such as fig, thistle, safflower, thyme,
and even pine cones. These might make their way into products that would seem similar to our own
versions of cheddar, gouda, swiss, mozzarella, and more. Its from Columella that we also learn that
the Romans preferred a more moist style of cheddar cheese. This is perfect as it would be the natural
choice for a reconstructed bacon cheeseburger. Alright, so at this point we’ve added
all the major toppings for our hamburger. Now let’s see what sorts of condiments
we could offer our customers. Today the most common options are
usually ketchup, mustard, and mayonnaise. The first one we will have to rule out
because it is derived from tomatoes which did not yet exist in the mediterranean.
You could attempt to use Garum instead which was just as ubiquitous but admittedly
I think this might be taking things too far. Maybe its a secret menu item
for those who really want it. As for mustard we will be in better luck. The
Romans were actually the first known civilization to experiment with mustard sauce, and it was a
common, cheap, and widely used addition to many different dishes. Heck, mustard was so common
that a street preacher in a backwater town of a distant province made a parable about
the mustard seed that’s well known today. Apicius alone has multiple different recipes
for mustard sauces involving things like salt and vinegar. While some of these would
taste a bit different to modern tongues, they would probably be recognizable
as an artisanal flavour palette. When it comes to mayonaise we are on a bit more
speculative ground. There are no records of the Romans ever having used it and the first
recognizable form of Mayo only first appears in 18th century French cuisine. Therefore, if
you wanted to make an authentic “Roman” burger, mayonnaise probably wouldn’t appear in it. However
all the necessary ingredients were there so we wouldn't really be breaking ITTC regulations here.
All we would need then is egg yolk, wine vinegar, olive oil, and a bit of mustard or garlic all
of which were readily available and quite cheap. And there you have it, the necessary steps to make
your very own “Roman Hamburger”. I’ll certainly be forwarding the list onto our folks over at
Caesar’s Grill so they can start to roll it out for the masses. Let me know if is this ancient
twist on the burger is something you would try or let me know what other sorts of
meals you’d like to see transported back into the past (though please try and stay
compliant with those ITTC regulations). I hope you enjoyed this continued foray
into the world of ancient roman cuisine. I’ve had a ton of fun diving deeper into the
subject. A big thanks to Max for dropping by, to the Patrons for helping support
the channel and to the researchers, writers, and artists who made this video
possible. Be sure to like and subscribe for more content and check out these other
related videos. See you in the next one!
