Simply final month, we featured right here on Open Tradition the invention of a Pompeiian fresco presupposed to depict an historic ancestor of pizza. For many of us pizza-loving hundreds of thousands — nay, billions — world wide, this was a notable curiosity however for Max Miller, it was clearly a problem. Because the creator of the hit Youtube channel Tasting Historical past, every of whose episodes includes devoted re-creation of dishes from eras previous, he couldn’t probably have ignored this growth. But it surely additionally poses even stiffer difficulties than most of his culinary tasks, offering him not a recipe to work with however an image, and never a very detailed image at that.
The fresco’s style is xenia, which, Miller explains in the video above, “comes from the Greek phrase that referred to a form of social contract between hosts and company.” The traditional Roman architect Vitruvius (he whose work impressed Leonardo’s Vitruvian Man) described how the Greeks, after turning into rich, “started offering eating rooms, chambers, and storerooms of provisions for his or her company.”
The foods and drinks they introduced out for his or her dinner events grew to become the topic of xenia artworks like this fresco from Pompeii, which occurs to incorporate a familiar-looking spherical bread. What’s extra, “some students have advised that one of many substances that in all probability is on this bread is form of pizza-like, insofar as it’s a form of spreadable cheese.”
The standard of that ingredient, referred to as moretum, seemingly makes or breaks this historic pizza, and so Miller spends many of the video explaining its preparation, drawing particulars from a poem attributed to Virgil. These following alongside in their very own kitchens might want to collect a pair heads of garlic, giant handfuls of parsley and cilantro, a small handful of rue, and ten ounces of white cheese. While you’ve made the moretum, you may bake the Roman bread, loaves of which had been preserved by the explosion of Mount Vesuvius, then unfold on the moretum and “high it with issues like white cheese, dates, pomegranates, or no matter else you noticed within the fresco.” Miller notes that precise Pompeiians in all probability wouldn’t have sliced the ultimate product, however fairly picked off and eaten its toppings one-by-one earlier than getting round to the bread: a pizza consumption technique practiced by quite a lot of of us moderns, at the very least in childhood.
Associated content material:
A Newly Found Fresco in Pompeii Reveals a Precursor to Pizza
Historic Italian Cooking: How one can Make Historical Roman & Medieval Italian Dishes
The First Pizza Ordered by Pc, 1974
Primarily based in Seoul, Colin Marshall writes and broadcasts on cities, language, and tradition. His tasks embody the Substack publication Books on Cities, the e book The Stateless Metropolis: a Stroll via Twenty first-Century Los Angeles and the video collection The Metropolis in Cinema. Comply with him on Twitter at @colinmarshall or on Fb.
