In ancient Greece spartan warriors were
renowned for three things: their bravery in battle, their pithy
comebacks, and their atrocious cuisine. Their most
infamous dish being melas zomos, or black broth. Just looking at it
makes you wonder if Leonidas's declaration of "tonight we dine in hell"
was less of a threat, and more of a promise of better things to come,
but regardless of my own personal feelings on the look of this dish, today
in the name of food history, I'm going to do my best to recreate
spartan black broth, and try to find out what in the
background of a Spartan warrior would lead them to sup on such a soup.
This time on Tasting History. The Greek writer Athenaeus tells us of a
man from Sybaris who tried melas zomos, afterwards saying
it is natural for the Spartans to be the bravest of men
for any man in his senses would rather die ten thousand times over than live
as miserably as this. Now that's a one star Yelp review if i've ever heard one,
but what caused such disgust and vitriol for this
spartan broth? Well unfortunately as so many things from antiquity we don't
actually have a recipe, but we do have a fairly good
idea of the main ingredients. There's mentioned that it
was made with pork and then because of the black color we can deduce that it
was also made with pork blood, and then it would also need vinegar,
because vinegar would stop that blood from coagulating.
Other than that we're kind of guessing what would be in it.
Historians believe that it also probably had herbs, and salt,
and maybe even onions so i'm going to put all of those in just
for flavor's sake. Now when it comes to the process of making our soup we can
rely on modern soups for that because the
process tends to be uniform wherever they have blood soups. German
schwarzsauer, filipino dinuguan and a whole host of Eastern European
blood soups. So those are a lot more flavorful,
going to have a lot of ingredients so we're going to be a little bit more
Spartan in ours but the process should remain about the same. So
for this soup you will need two pounds, or one kilogram of pork leg, or other
pork product. Two cups, or a half liter of pig blood.
Now finding pig blood, not always the easiest thing but the
best place to start is going to be a Chinese market.
They might even have fresh pig blood, and that's the best. That's what you really
want, but a lot of times they're not going to
have that. Instead they have these bricks of
kind of coagulated pig blood which will work just fine,
we'll just have to go through an extra step during the recipe. 1 cup or 235
milliliters of white wine vinegar, 2 tablespoons of
olive oil, 1 teaspoon of salt or more to taste, 4
cups or 1 liter of water, 3 bay leafs, and 1 chopped onion.
So first go ahead and put a large stock pot over medium-high heat,
and add in your olive oil. Then toss in your onions and stirring them around
every once in a while let them cook until they've be,ome nice
and tender, or lightly browned. about 10 minutes. Then add in your pork
and give that about 10 minutes also to brown. Then pour in your 1 cup of
vinegar, then 3 or 4 cups of water. Now if you
have fresh blood put all 4 cups of water in, but if you have that kind of
coagulated brick of pig's blood then save one cup back
because we're going to need that in our process to
liquefy the rest of the blood. Then add in your salt
and your bay leaves and stir everything together. Then raise the heat to high
until the soup is boiling at which point you're going to lower the heat to
medium-low, and let it simmer just until the pork is
cooked about 45 minutes to an hour. Now so far this kind of sounds like my
granny's pork stew though maybe with a lot more vinegar and a few less
potatoes and other delicious ingredients, but
overall nothing too crazy but we are about to add that last
crucial and oddest ingredient that might turn some people away -
the blood. Mwahahahhaha 3:) I'm sorry. 0:) So if you have fresh blood
pour it into the soup right now, stir it around and let it simmer for about
another 15 minutes, but if you have that brick of blood
break it up a little bit and put it into a blender, then add that last cup of
water and blend to your heart's content. Now there
might still be some chunks in there, they're not going to hurt you but if you
want you can strain them out just to make a little bit more of a
smooth broth than chunky. Either way pour it into the
pot and let it simmer for 15 more minutes.
Now despite what we may feel about this soup today
it's clear that it helped to build Spartan muscles.
Not those muscles, these muscles. But one cannot become a Spartan on soup alone
so let us look at what else in the life of a Spartan would lead you to become
such a warrior. Plutarch tells a story of a man named
Dionysius who was the ruler or the tyrant
of Sicily, and Dionysius had heard tell of this magical
black broth of the Spartans which turned them into such hardened warriors
so he wanted to try some for himself. So he got himself a Spartan slave who
happened to be a cook, and told him make me a bowl of this so I
too can become a great warrior, but the moment that he tasted it he spat
it out and the the cook said though i'm guessing
trying to stifle a laugh "your majesty it is necessary to have
exercised in the Spartan manner, and to have bathed
in the Eurotas, in order to relish this broth". i.e if you
ain't a spartan to begin with you better just stick to chicken noodle.
And reading this story made me wonder just what do you have to do to create a
Spartan warrior? Well for that we should go back to the
very beginning with the birth of a little Spartan baby
boy, we'll call him Billy, Billy the Spartan. Now the moment
the cord is cut it's time for Billy's first bath,
but no need for water. No, no a jug of cheap wine will do just fine.
See Spartan mothers believed that if the baby was weak then the wine would make
them go into convulsions and die, but if baby Billy was strong then he
would let it roll off him like merlot off a duck's back.
Spartan mothers were not known for their maternal instinct, there's actually a
great story about a young man going off to war and his
mother hands him his shield and says "either come back with this or
on it". Thanks for the encouragement mom. Now if Billy passed mommy's wine test
then it was time for daddy to take his turn.
He would take the infant to the Gerousia or the council of elders to be examined.
iIf the baby looked sturdy then he was assigned a plot of land,
and given back to the father to raise but if little Billy didn't look so good
then he would be thrown into the Apothetae chasm at the foot of Mount
Taÿgetus. Now don't worry, modern archaeology
disputes this because all the bodies found there have been
adults. Now provided Billy avoided the pit he would be handed off to a nurse to
be raised for the first few years of his life,
but with Spartan nurses there was none of this namby-pamby swaddling and
coddling. No, no they would be left naked and crying in a dark room until they
stopped whimpering, and learned to be okay being alone.
Sounds like something my therapist would now charge $200
an hour for. Spartan nurses were so prized for their skill at neglect,
and complete lack of empathy that wealthy families from all over Greece
would often bring Spartan nurses into their own home
to raise their children. The great Athenian General Alcibiades had a
Spartan nurse named Amicla, and he turned out great so maybe there
is something to it. Now assuming little Billy made it past
nurse Ratched to the ripe old age of seven
he would be entered into the Agoge which was a training program
meant to make Spartan warriors. On the first day of school he would be assigned
to a troop similar to the houses at Hogwarts because for the next few
years they would do everything together. They had their hair
clipped short, forced to go around barefoot
and usually just went without clothes of any kind until they were 12 when they
got a single red cloak that would have to last them the entire
year. Often not bathing more than once or twice during
the entire time. So one can only imagine the rankness of
their sleeping quarters where all the boys in the troop
slept together on reed mats that they had to make by pulling out reeds from the
Eurotus river without the aid of a knife. They spent
their days learning the bare minimum of reading and writing,
and more often spent time in mock battle, or beating up helots.
Now helots were the bottom rung of Spartan society,
even though they were the vast majority of Spartan society.
You could basically beat them up with impunity.
Now if no helots happened to be around then it was time for a taunting.
"Your mother was a hamster, and your father
smelled of elderberries." Spartan youths were encouraged to
mock and taunt each other to a mean degree without any conviviality, just
mean-spirited mockery, and the victim had to take it without getting upset but
the moment that they said to cease it had to stop. So
that's nice I guess. "Now go away or I shall
taunt you a second time." Now a morning of beating up helots and taunting your
friends is sure to work up an appetite, so at this point it was time to eat but
unfortunately for little Billy there wasn't gonna be much on the menu.
Spartan boys would accompany their fathers to the Syssitia
which was kind of similar to a modern day military mess, but it was something
that you belonged to. Once there they would have the barest of
rations sometimes being fortunate enough to have a kammatides
which was something like a cake made of olive oil
and barley groats wrapped in laurel leaves. Sounds delish,
but if Billy was still hungry after that then he would be encouraged
to steal whatever else he wanted probably usually from those
same helots who he beat up that morning. Now if he was caught stealing
he would be flogged mercilessly, sometimes until the point just before
death. Not for stealing but for getting caught.
Plutarch tells a story of a boy who had stolen a fox and he was carrying it
around, and then somebody approached him and
rather than be detected he hid the fox under his cloak but then
the fox ended up disemboweling him with his claws and his teeth,
and the little boy died. Moral of the story:
steal vegetables. Now if little Billy doesn't have his guts ripped out by a
woodland creature and makes it to the age of 20 it's time
to join the syssitia and the Spartan army but you have to be
voted in. Now if he doesn't get voted in that
first year he has until the age of 30, he can try over and over again
all the way until 30. That's also the year that he can finally get married
and move out into his own home but if he hits 30 and still hasn't been voted into
the syssitia then he's considered a disgrace and will
never achieve full citizenship, but good news for Billy he
got voted in and now he's a full member of the
syssitia and the food is about to get a little bit better. Athanaeus quoting
disiercus says the dinner is at first served
separately to each member and there is no sharing of any kind with
one's neighbor. Afterward there is a barley cake as large
as each desires, and for drinking a cup is set beside
them to use whenever he is thirsty. The same meat dish is given to all on
every occasion, a piece of boiled pork. Besides this
there is nothing whatsoever except of course the melas zomos made
from this meat. There may possibly be an olive or cheese,
or a fig, or something similar. So now that's the
basic meal but afterward on occasions there would be something called
the epaiklon which was a kind of forced potluck.
"Following the meal, it is customary for something to be provided by several
persons, a dish prepared in their own homes, and
called epaiklon. No one is in the habit of
contributing anything which he has bought by purchase in the market,
for they contribute not to satisfy their pleasure or the greed of the stomach
but to give evidence of their own prowess in the hunt...
the cooks announce to the company the names of those who bring in anything for
the occasion, in order that they may realize the labor
spent upon the chase and the zeal manifested for themselves."
So just like today it should be homemade, you can't just go down and get yourself
some brownie bites at the Piggly Wiggly, and I love the part where they announce
all of the dishes that people have made. It's like "look everyone Gladys May made
her famous country chicken casserole, yummy!" *clap clap
So at these second breakfasts of sorts Athenaeus says that the Spartan warriors
would eat fresh greens beans, wheat bread, and even
sometimes little honey cakes called fisiquilos so clearly Spartan meals have
a much worse rap than they probably deserve, but
in comparison with a lot of their neighbors they were still very
meager. According to Herodotus when the Persian King Xerxes fled from Greece
he left everything behind including his lavish war tent.
Coming across the tent the Spartan general Pausanias was struck by the
opulence, and you know wanting to see how the
other half lived he decided to sit down on one of the golden silver embroidered
couches, and commanded the captured Persian cooks
to cook him a meal fit for a general. Then he asked his own
Spartan cooks to do the same. When both meals were set
out before him he just laughed and called in the other
Greek generals to say "Men of Greece, I ask you here to show you
the folly of the Persians who, living in this style, came to Greece
to rob us of our poverty." So yeah, you can kind of
see why the cook told old Dionysius that you're just not going to get it if you
weren't raised a Spartan, and I was not raised a Spartan. No, no
it's true but i'm still going to try this melas zomos
for myself.nSo after 15 minutes of simmering, or more, you can really
let this simmer all day if you want, but the soup
is now ready to try. And here we are melas zomos: Spartan black broth.
So yeah, here we go, um you know the it smells
vinegary as I expected but it also smells of pork.
It doesn't smell bad, it just
smells like like pork stew. Um, here we go. I'm gonna just try the broth
at first... X_X Hmm, it's not bad.
I'm gonna take, take a taste with the meat now. It's vinegary. It's fine!
I think those other Greeks were just being babies, this is not terrible.
It does not look appetizing, and maybe that's you know that's what they
were kind of going off of, but it's fine. I wouldn't want it. I
wouldn't, I'm never going to crave this, um partly because it's just kind of
flavorless in a way. I would love some more herbs and spices, and maybe they
used more, we don't know. It's pretty Spartan
which is which is what it should be Yeah, there it is Spartan black broth,
don't know what all the fuss is about except for the look
which is horrific. So while i'm not going to enthusiastically endorse you making
this it's kind of interesting, and how often
do you get to eat black food? Not too often,
um but maybe maybe just make it for yourself,
and your closest friends who you know won't abandon you because i think if you
did this for a dinner party that would be your last dinner party...
Anyway, make sure to like this video and I will see you next time
on Tasting History.
