Fresh Meat and Lac Concretum: The Roman Age, 1st Century BC to 5th Century AD
When the Romans began to take an interest in the lands of the north, they started to write about Germans’ lifestyle and foodways. Here is the Roman historian Tacitus in his Germania from AD 98:
As soon as they wake up, which is often well after sunrise . . . they take a meal, each one having a separate seat and table. Then they go out, with their weapons, to business, or often enough to a feast. No one thinks it disgraceful to carry on drinking all day and all night. As is natural among men who are drunk there are frequent quarrels, which are occasionally settled by violent words, more often by killing and wounding. All the same, they also frequently deliberate at feasts . . . At no other time, they think, is the heart so open to frank thoughts or so warm towards noble sentiments . . . For drink they have a liquid made out of barley or other grain, fermented into a certain resemblance to wine. Those who live nearest to the river-bank [the Rhine] buy wine as well. Their food is plain: wild fruit, fresh game, or lac concretum, curdled milk. They satisfy their hunger without elaborate preparation or seasonings. But as far as thirst is concerned they are less restrained: if you indulge their intemperance by supplying as much as they crave, they will be as easily defeated by their vices as by force of arms.1
Tacitus probably never travelled to Germany, but relied mostly on the reports of Pliny the Elder. He described Germany’s climate as raw. Its landscape held little appeal for him since it was covered by forests and marshes; it was suitable for grain crops but not for the planting of orchards. Germans, he observed, took pride in the quantity of their cattle, by which they counted their wealth, and made no fuss about their food. Mothers breastfed their own children as a matter of principle. The idea that the simpler diet of more primitive cultures was healthier would be reiterated by later physicians and would spring up again in the writings of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and the Romantics.
Ever since the arrival of the first professional cooks and bakers from Greece at the end of the third century BC, the Romans had developed an enthusiastic interest in good food and wine and become experts in related food production and processing technologies. The elaborate road and transport systems introduced in all Roman provinces enabled the exchange of culinary knowledge and products across the whole empire. Spices were an important part of the intensely flavoured Roman cuisine, although the substantial sums spent on them were severely critized by Tacitus, Pliny and some of their colleagues as decadent and unnatural – an idea which later came into its own in the Christian disapproval of gluttony. Reading this early report about German ways, we should keep in mind that Tacitus had an agenda: he wanted to demonstrate an unspoilt, naturally strong people as a reprimand to his effiminate, degenerate compatriots (he was a young boy at the time of Nero’s debauchery and the great fire of Rome). In Roman eyes the diet he described was truly wild: Romans did not eat meat before it had been hung, so failure to do this was a serious sign of lack of civilization, as was hunting instead of growing your own produce. Lac concretum, curdled milk or quark, must also have sounded primitive, since the Romans were well accustomed to the use of rennet to produce large storable cheeses.
The Romans did their best to spread their culture as far as possible, pushing the frontiers of their empire further and further into barbarian territories. With the Roman army came their foodways. It was a major task to feed the soldiers and those following them and Roman commanders had to stock a year’s worth of food at all times. Figs, rice, olives and chickpeas were imported, but for grain, meat and wine, local production was essential. It was inevitable that the Germans would sooner or later become familiar with and involved in the Roman ways and habits, and there can be no doubt that the Roman influence improved German provender.
The introduction of Mediterranean-style agriculture initiated an agrarian revolution on German soil, with Roman culture reaching its peak in the new provinces in the second century AD, when the military administration was replaced by a free and private economy. The Germanic Roman provinces became quite densely inhabited, with a cross-cultural mix of Celtic, Celtic-Germanic, Germanic, Gallic and Italic people and lifestyles. Food production for the army as well as the larger settlements relied on villae rusticae, Roman-style farms whose location was carefully chosen according to topography, soil type and infrastructure. They were often placed between fields on high dry areas on one side and lower areas along a stream on the other. Isolated from other settlements and surrounded by fields, woods, grasslands and pastures, holdings ranged from 50 to 250 hectares. Villae rusticae consisted of buildings of varying levels of comfort and included stables, barns, storage buildings and workshops for the purposes of iron smelting, pottery making and glass production. Food surpluses were traded by some, while others developed specialized products through milling, drying or sawing. New agricultural technology, possibly triggered by the different climate, made for faster and more efficient working processes without the need for slave labour. A more sophisticated kind of plough using coulters and mouldboards, larger scythes and a grain harvesting ‘machine’ came into common use. Rye was introduced from the Germanic east, and naked wheat arrived from the Gallic west, to join local varieties which kept longer and better in a moderate, humid climate, since they were covered by husks. As with all husked grain varieties, they needed to be dried in kilns, which may well also have been used for flax or malt in beer production.
Germany during Roman times.
The daily grain ration for the Roman military was 650 g, supplemented by meat (mostly bacon), cheese, vegetables, salt, olive oil and simple wine. Soldiers’ daily staple was the familiar gruel, which they called puls. It was made from millet, oats and barley and was comparable to a very rough polenta. Bread was also produced in considerable quantity and thought of as more nourishing and indispensable in times of war. And, since Roman cuisine needs plenty of oil, local production from linseed, poppyseed and camelina augmented imported olive oil from the Mediterranean, as did locally grown herbs as additions or replacements for imported spices. Roman agriculturalists were adept at developing new varieties suited to different climatic conditions. Orchards thrived and vegetable production became much more efficient under their care. They brought into cultivation new or previously rare food plants such as amaranth, chard, turnip, purslane, garlic, dill, coriander, savory, thyme, celery, apricots, almonds, peaches, quinces, walnuts, chestnuts and medlars, as well as Vitis vinifera, the wine grape.
Viticulture flourished: wine was an intrinsic part of the Roman lifestyle. In his poem Mosella, Decimus Magnus Ausonius described late fourth-century wineries in the region around Trier on the banks of the Mosel (also a useful source of river fish) with up to 60 hectares of vines planted on terraced slopes. But in contrast to the Germanic excess (at least according to Tacitus), Romans frowned upon drunkenness. Wine, and for lesser occasions (or social groups) vinegar, was usually mixed with water, the latter mixture called posca. Lora was made by soaking the skins and seeds left in the press after winemaking in water to produce a drink that was only slightly alcoholic, but less contaminated with germs. The Germans had developed excellent coopering skills that were taken over by the Romans, who found that transporting wine in wooden barrels was much easier than it was in amphorae.
Roman convivia consisted mostly of three courses, with the food cut in small pieces and eaten with a spoon. The meat of choice was pork, but venison, boar, hare, dormice, all kinds of birds, farmed snails, fish, oysters and mussels featured as well. Breeding improved cattle by crossing larger Roman bulls with the smaller local animals, and the proportion of cattle to pigs and goats rose substantially. While pigs were only useful as meat, cattle, in addition to producing milk, supplied by-products such as hides and, even more importantly, worked in the fields. In late summer cattle were also moved from their pastures to glean in the grain fields after they were harvested and improve the next year’s yield by producing manure in situ. It can reasonably be assumed, too, that the Romans introduced rennetting, an essential prelude to the preparation of storeable cheese.
At times the complete standing Roman army was deployed along the Rhine. Agricultural productivity increased and the economy boomed, fuelled in addition by the development of related industries such as the production of terra sigillata or Samian ware, a glazed, bright orange earthenware popular throughout Germania. In larger settlements trading took place on fixed days in covered markets, with all kinds of specialists operating from nearby workshops. There were drying kilns for husking grain, bakeries and smokeries, usually combined with a cooking facility. Professional butchers slaughtered the traded livestock as required. As a general rule, one-third of young animals were kept for work and breeding while the rest were slaughtered for immediate consumption, either at home or in taverns equipped with street kitchens.
The economic boom, however, had its drawbacks. Exhausted soils required either fallow periods or the regular application of large amounts of manure. Plentiful supplies of wood were needed by various industries, including shipbuilding, and overcropping of woodland led to soil erosion and the need to procure wood over ever-increasing distances. For the same reasons, pottery and brick-making workshops, originally conveniently located in or immediately around cities, followed the supply of wood and moved further away. Nevertheless the Roman system worked well enough for most of the population and offered some the chance of social mobility.
Wineship found in Neumagen am Mosel, 3rd century AD, as part of a funeral monument.
By no means all of Germany was under Roman occupation. In fact, a much larger part than just one small, indomitable village resisted the invaders and stopped Julius Caesar’s troops halfway. The Romans were able to establish themselves in the so-called Agri Decumates, roughly today’s states of Baden-Württemberg and Bavaria. Even there they felt constantly threatened by incursions from outsiders. Eventually, in spite of the protective Limes, the Alamans forced the Romans out of the Agri Decumates and back behind the Rhine and the Danube in around AD 260. But their culinary ways didn’t disappear with them. What we call Alemannic food today in southwest Germany, the Romans’ so-called Lesser Germania (as well as Alsace and the northwest of Switzerland), is based on the legacy of the erstwhile invaders. Northwest of the Rhine, the imperialists hung on for some two centuries longer. Trier on the Mosel was the largest city north of the Alps, and Cologne, also a real metropolis at the time (which boasted one of the longest Roman-built aqueducts, linking the city to the Eifel mountain range) became deeply ingrained with a southern temperament and food culture.
A culinary place in time: The Isis temple in Mainz
What might be regarded as Germany’s oldest-known restaurant was excavated in 2001 (www.roemisches-mainz.de). It formed part of a temple consecrated to the goddesses Isis and Kybele at the Roman legionnaires’ post of Mogontiacum, now Mainz. The meat offerings made here were a public affair. Gods and goddesses savoured the smoke and lesser parts while the choice cuts were cooked to be sold at the market or savoured in the small dining rooms where temple benefactors were permitted to entertain their friends. Since there were neither serving staff nor cooks, the arrangement could be considered much the same as a self-service restaurant. The expectation that the temple gods would join the meal, especially Isis’s husband Serapis, seems to anticipate the Christian Communion (although in the Eucharist meat was replaced by bread and wine).
In the free part of Germany Roman culture was obviously much less influential. The remains of Germanic settlements and graves at several sites in Berlin and far into the Germanic and Slavic east tell a different story from those in the southwest. Direct contact with Romans was unlikely for the inhabitants of the small farmsteads at such a great distance from the border, but some exchange took place through German legionnaires serving in the Roman army as well as through trade. Bronze vessels were in demand and, to a lesser degree, so was silver and glassware, as well as high-quality Samian ware. Native-born Germans such as the Cheruscan Arminius were permitted to enlist and could attain high rank in the Roman army, returning home more or less assimilated and bringing with them elaborate tools, ceramic vases and tureens, drinking horns made of silver and horn, dainty silver cups, scissors, casseroles, jugs, bronze buckets and glass bowls. Goods traded from Germany to the Roman Empire, though less archaeologically visible, are mentioned in writings of the time; of particular note were cattle, horses, hides, furs, down feathers, slaves and amber.
The Roman poet Seneca shared Tacitus’ gloomy view about the barbarians’ unfortunate fate: ‘Everlasting winter, a grey sky, the barren soil nourishing them meagrely.’2 But in general agricultural standards were on the rise, though the improvements were much less pronounced than in the Roman-dominated provinces and far removed from the larger and highly professional Roman farming estates in the occupied provinces. During the milder periods of the early centuries AD, the marshes and islands along the coast were settled, often behind artificial banks of earth (Wurten) that provided extra space and safety. Tacitus wasn’t far off the mark: animal husbandry more or less directly shaped everybody’s life. People and animals (besides cattle, sheep were popular for their wool) lived alongside one another in large houses. In the inland regions, more spacious pens for livestock and additional pit-houses for the storage of hay were used. Chicken, geese and ducks provided meat and eggs. Pigs were often fattened in oak woods.
Hunting (with hounds and hawks) was increasingly seen as a sign of status and was reserved for the elite; the carcass was valued less for its meat than its feathers or furs, bones and antlers. Horses were still rarer than cattle and were rarely used for fieldwork; instead, they were hunting companions and warhorses. As in pre-Roman times, they were the sacrifical animal of choice. Sacrifices took place at fixed locations, often involving wooden sculptures of idols, and appear to have been related to significant agricultural events such as sowing, harvest or transhumance in spring and autumn.
Farms were rarely larger than 20 hectares, and settlements were generally self-sufficent. Field crops changed little during the period, although flax and hemp (grown for oil and fibre) saw a noticeable rise. Barley, both huskless and husked, was the most popular grain, followed by oats and rye, with millet and wheat, both huskless and as husked emmer, not far behind. Blocks of fields which formed an irregular mosaic were ard-ploughed in a crisscross pattern. Very gradually longer strip-shaped fields appeared because of the increasing use of the single-sided plough, which turned the soil in one direction, creating characteristic ridges and furrows. To the agricultural armoury were added harrows, harks and large sickles and scythes, all of which delivered faster and more efficient ways of cutting of straw and hay. Fertilizers such as limestone marl, seaweed, household waste and hearth-ash produced a slight improvement in yield.
Thus our imagined meal of gruel and boiled meat from the Neolithic period still held true. But while wild fruit and berries as well as herbs and nuts continued to be gathered, cultivated broad (fava) beans and onions were now a regular feature. Bread had become a more viable alternative, made from barley as the basic staple for ordinary people and wheat for the better-off. In the north, quark (without any doubt the lac concretum mentioned by Tacitus) was made by letting sour milk curdle and separating the liquid from the solids through an earthenware sieve. It might sometimes have been sweetened with honey: apiculture gradually became more sophisticated as wild forest bees were offered nesting opportunities in hollowed-out tree trunks equipped with entrance holes, frames for the combs and a lid to give beekeepers access to the contents. Wooden barrels helped to turn milk into butter, although there is no certainty that the butter was consumed as a foodstuff, since recorded uses are medicinal or cosmetic. As reported by Tacitus, beer (or rather a form of ale or kwass) was very popular, and besides that there were mead and possibly cider, whereas grape wine almost certainly remained an imported luxury. Thanks to low population numbers clean drinking water was abundant, even without aqueducts: large areas of free Germany remained covered with dense forests and were barely inhabited. Altogether their larders might have been stocked in less varied and sophisticated ways than those of the Romans, but there seems to have been a reliable surplus. As witnessed by the settlements on the coast, the area under cultivation slowly extended and the population gradually increased. Specialist craftsmen such as potters and glassblowers could ply their trade without the need for direct involvement in food production.
When the Franks drove the invaders out for good, the more prosperous of the Romans went with them, especially the owners of large estates. But many of the ordinary people – labourers and workers – stayed behind, maintaining the Roman agricultural system in Lesser Germania throughout the fifth century. Then the infrastructure of the distribution system gradually collapsed, roads fell into disrepair and trade became less efficient. Germanic settlements slowly absorbed the remaining Roman population (explaining the dark eyes and hair of many a Mosel winegrower today) and villae rusticae began to disappear. For roughly four centuries, though, agricultural and culinary developments in Germany had experienced new influences, reinforcing and augmenting the regional differences initiated earlier by the Celtic dominance in the south.
