Popular Foods of the Ancient Romans

For most of the people living in Ancient Rome, meals were centered around items like grain, corn, oil and wine. The wealthy, of course, would have had far more exotic foods at their disposal such as specially bred snails.

Cereals were considered a staple food which began its life as husked wheat made into porridge.

Bread was eaten more than anything else in Ancient Rome and was often enjoyed with honey or cheese on top of it. Bread was also accompanied by fowl, sausage, eggs, fish or shellfish.

When it came to seafood, fish and oysters were very popular, and pork was the Roman's favorite meat of choice.

Vegetables that were commonly used in the Roman kitchen were parsnips, lettuce, cabbage, asparagus, radishes, lentils, beans, and beets.

Everyone knows that the Romans loved drinking their wine, but they usually drank it watered down, spiced and heated. Wine that was undiluted was thought to be uncivil and looked down upon.

Pasca was a beverage that the lower classes drank and was made by watering down acetum, a poor wine that probably tasted similar to vinegar.

Sheep and goat's milk were used only for making cheeses as the Romans felt the practice of drinking the milk itself was barbaric. The Romans loved cheese, with smoked cheese being a particular favorite of the people.

The Romans had a vast array of flavored sauces that they used extensively to mask the natural flavors of their foods. The most common of these was liquamen, similar to today's fish stock. Liquamen was such a popular item that it was produced in factories in dozens of towns around the Roman empire.

Herbs were also a tool that the Romans made good use of. One herb that was used frequently by Roman chefs was called silphium, which originally came from the Greek colony of Cyrenaica. An Apician cookbook suggests that keeping silphium in a jar full of pine kernels helps to absorb the flavor and keep it stable.