Dondero: Soups in ancient Rome

Soup means comfort. It has for millennia. That warm liquid containing meat, fish, vegetables, grains or starches has long been thought to sustain and restore health.

The word "restaurant," which in French means "restoring," originally indicated a public establishment in which to eat soup.

The origins of soup

Soup has been with us since hollow clay cooking pots were developed, during the Neolithic Age some 9,000 years ago. Boiling meat in water with plants or grains was the first culinary breakthrough after roasting over fire.

Rudimentary recipes for boiled meals still exist from 3,600 years ago. Babylonian clay tablets containing more than 30 such recipes in cuneiform script have been translated by a food-loving French scholar.

Soup also is biblical. In Genesis, recorded roughly 2,500 years ago, Esau, the first-born son of Isaac and grandson of Abraham, traded his inheritance for red lentil "pottage," a high price indeed for soup.

Hot pea soup was sold on the streets of ancient Athens, Greece. Soup appears in the works of Aristophanes, the fourth century BCE Greek comic playwright, including "The Knights," "The Birds," "Lysistrata," "The Frogs" and "Plutus." It's mostly pea or lentil soup and represents simple comfort, but in "Lysistrata," a soldier on horseback buys vegetable soup from a street vendor and for lack of a better container carries it away in his helmet.

Soup means comfort. It has for millennia. That warm liquid containing meat, fish, vegetables, grains or starches has long been thought to sustain and restore health.

The word “restaurant,” which in French means “restoring,” originally indicated a public establishment in which to eat soup.

The origins of soup

Soup has been with us since hollow clay cooking pots were developed, during the Neolithic Age some 9,000 years ago. Boiling meat in water with plants or grains was the first culinary breakthrough after roasting over fire.

Rudimentary recipes for boiled meals still exist from 3,600 years ago. Babylonian clay tablets containing more than 30 such recipes in cuneiform script have been translated by a food-loving French scholar.

Soup also is biblical. In Genesis, recorded roughly 2,500 years ago, Esau, the first-born son of Isaac and grandson of Abraham, traded his inheritance for red lentil “pottage,” a high price indeed for soup.

Hot pea soup was sold on the streets of ancient Athens, Greece. Soup appears in the works of Aristophanes, the fourth century BCE Greek comic playwright, including “The Knights,” “The Birds,” “Lysistrata,” “The Frogs” and “Plutus.” It’s mostly pea or lentil soup and represents simple comfort, but in “Lysistrata,” a soldier on horseback buys vegetable soup from a street vendor and for lack of a better container carries it away in his helmet.

Soup in ancient Rome

The oldest intact cookbook dates to fourth or early fifth century Rome. “De Re Coquinaria,” attributed to “Apicius,” was compiled from earlier books and probably represents more than one author. Some of the recipes may date to the first century.

The cookbook was aimed at wealthy, ostentatious Romans who had little to do, and lots of time, money and servants with which to do it. Extravagant Apician recipes called for delicacies like flamingoes, ostriches, cranes, sea urchins, jellyfish, milk-fed snails, pigs’ brains, sheep’s lungs, sterile sows’ wombs, dormice and truffles.

Apicius has half a dozen recipes that I can find that resemble soups. Most are complex or require outlandish ingredients. However, “Tisanam Barricam” (Book IV, section IV, no. 2), made from barley, dry legumes, spices and fresh greens, can be almost completely replicated today.

Our word ‘soup’

The word soup itself emerges from the tangle of history, particularly the slow disintegration of the Roman Empire.

In classical Latin, soup, or broth, was “ius,” also meaning juice and, for some reason, justice or law. However “suppa,” of Germanic origin, was the word for soup in Late Latin, as the Romans increasingly yielded to the “barbarian” invaders.

Originally, suppa only meant bread soaking (or “sopping”) up broth that was poured over it in a bowl, a typical way to consume stale baked goods. Eventually the word came to mean the liquid rather than the soaking.

Suppa migrated from Latin into its offshoot, Old French, as “soupe.” Much later, it entered English as “soup,” where it joined the older words “pottage” and “broth.”

Pea Soup

Dried peas and lentils intertwine with the history of soup. Fossil records show these legumes were cultivated in Southwest Asia as early as 6,000 BCE. Ancient peas are likely to have been yellow. The green variant appears to have emerged in Europe in the Middle Ages.

Pea and lentil soups reach back into antiquity throughout the Mediterranean. For countless centuries, pea soup sustained and assured protein, vitamins and minerals to ordinary people throughout Europe and then in North America.

A particularly famous version made with green split peas is Dutch “erwtensoep,” also called “snert.” Made thick enough to stand up a spoon, the hearty concoction contains sliced smoked sausage. In winter, vendors sell it to skaters along frozen canals.

Soup terminology

Soup is the general term in modern English. Bouillon, broth and consommé are clear soups. Bisque is a thick, smooth soup, often containing cream. Potage (from the French) is a thick soup with pieces of vegetable or meat. The older English “pottage” is now obsolete as the term for thick soup. Chowder is thick and chunky, and typically contains milk and seafood. Stew, while somewhat like soup, is a different dish, with thickened liquid and larger pieces of meat, fish or vegetables.

2,000 years of soups

Here are recipes for four soups that span the ages. Barley Soup with Legumes and Greens is adapted from the cookbook of Apicius from ancient Rome. Dutch Pea Soup has been a sustaining winter dish for centuries. French Pumpkin Bisque is a 20th century soup. Finally, from the 21st century is Red Riot Soup, a dish I recently created from 10 red vegetables plus red wine.

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Ancient Roman Barley Soup with Legumes and Greens

Asian fish sauce is the available equivalent of the ubiquitous Roman seasoning “garum,” also called “liq