welcome to how to cook that I'm Ann
Reardon and today we're gonna be making
a cake from 2000 years ago so how do we
even know what they ate back then
well I trip to Italy helped us find some
clues so we are here in ancient Pompeii
which was a city destroyed by an
eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD 79 so
2,000 years ago almost and a lot of it
was preserved by the ash that fell over
the course of really one or two days
just covered the entire city and is
preserved at City for thousands of years
this incredible place to think that
thousands of people lived here and they
all died all at once I think it's a bit
a year it's by an incredible really the
size of it how well-preserved it is it's
basically untouched as we walked around
Pompeii we saw the fast-food street
vendor stands for selling hot meals and
there's huge stone mills for grinding
corn and wheat into flour these were all
positioned in a bakery and they even
found preserved loaves of bread here
bread is great but I want to know about
sweet food a lot of the buildings have
these ornate mosaics and paintings in
the plaster and about 10 minutes away
from Pompeii there's a seaside villa
thought to have been owned by Nero
himself and there you can see a painting
of this cake on a pedestal cake stands
have got a lot smaller over the years
according to Pompeii dot org dot uk'
this is likely to have been adult CRPF
errata or honey cake
I don't know if I said that right but
anyway from their recipe it says we need
flour baking powder rosemary cinnamon
almonds grape juice
possum which is like a sweet white wine
honey milk and chopped hazelnuts my only
problem with this recipe is that it has
baking powder and baking powder wasn't
invented until 1843 so we're around 1700
years too early for that so I'm gonna
try and make this cake three ways once
with baking powder like they've got
suggested here once using nothing at all
and once using yeast which we know they
had because they needed it for their
bread okay so let's start with a hundred
and forty grams of flour I don't have
one of those huge stone mills like they
had in Pompeii but I did manage to get
this smaller version I guess I just pour
some wheat kernels and let them fall
down the hole in the middle there and
then tune it around this is not heavy
enough I don't think
look it's just spitting out wheat down
the bottom that doesn't help me having
whole wheat kernels that's what I put
into it it's not grinding them at all
don't buy one of these now if I push
down hard on it as I turn instead of
using the handle I can get some flour
mixed in with whole wheat kernels coming
out the other end now if I lift the top
off this it's quite heavy but you can
see some of it is getting crushed but
lots of it is not getting crushed at all
strangely enough I have actually ground
wheat before using a stone mill and it
should work really well so this is
definitely a dodgy model if I tip that
into a see if you'll be able to see we
are getting some flour but not enough to
make a cake so as soon as it's not
working I'm gonna cheat and put the
wheat kernels into my blender and grind
it up that way we have it so easy now
with electrical appliances we just don't
even think about it we're just using for
everything next we need half a teaspoon
of ground Rose Marie Rose Marie is one
of those hoops is easy to grow in the
garden that's quite Hardy it grows
really well in every state of Australia
here it's pretty hard to grow into fresh
rosemary though but I resist the urge to
put it in the blender with the flower
let me just first
forward put myself into blender speed
there we go we've got some ground
rosemarie next we need some ground
almonds again the blender would be super
handy for this job
baking even basic things just took them
so long to do everything back then now
we need some honey and some cinnamon
it's interesting that this recipe has no
eggs and no oil I wonder what it's going
to taste like
so we ground our wheat to make flour we
crush the almonds to make the almond
meal pounded the rosemary to break that
up and we've got the honey cinnamon and
baking powder which as I said they
didn't have back then so I'm only going
to use that in one of the cakes and not
the others we've also got here some milk
and they used a wine called passim now I
couldn't get that here so I'm swapping
it for this one which is apparently a
thick sweet white wine which is very
similar to passing so we'll start by
adding the cinnamon to the bowl with the
whole wheat flour and the crushed
almonds and rosemarie and stir that
together and you can see how out of
place the very white baking powder looks
compared to everything else which is
like these light brownish colors add in
the honey and the milk and the wine and
stir them together well that looks very
healthy very wholesome compared to
normal cake better and now I'm going to
split this into three bowls too this one
I'm adding baking powder to this bowl
I'm adding some instant dried yeast
and this one is staying plain with
nothing mix those through and put them
into cake pans now I assume they would
have had pottery dishes to bake these in
but I don't have little pottery dishes
so forgive me for using metal baking
tins now we need to leave the one with
the yeast in it to rise and you'll
notice I didn't need it because I don't
want it to develop the gluten in it and
become like a bread dough I want it to
have more of a cakey texture we can bake
the baking powder and plain one
straightaway just pop those into the
oven and
while they're baking chop up some
hazelnuts once those are done take them
out of the oven and drizzle the top with
honey and then sprinkle some hazelnuts
on top and you want to do this while
they're still hot so that honey kind of
melts down into it and makes the
hazelnuts stick our plane and baking
powder ones are ready but the one with
yeast in it has only just risen to the
top so I'll put that one in the oven to
bake now once that's done you want to
drizzle that one as well with your honey
and add the nuts on top now we've got
the one with no raising agent the one
with the baking powder and lastly the
one that had the yeast in it the yeast
one has quite big air bubbles on the
outside compared to the others if we
slice that in half we can see inside it
looks a bit like a carrot cake that
actually looks really yummy the baking
powder one if we cut that open looks
pretty much like a normal cake texture
and the one with no baking powder at all
or that one is solid there's no air
bubbles to be found in it now to taste
the two-thousand-year-old cake recipe
the one with no raising agent as you
would imagine is very dense that had no
air bubbles in it it's a bit like eating
how can I describe it it's a bit like
eating a protein ball it's that dense it
almost tastes fruity as well it's like I
can taste some apricot or maybe even
some orange in there which is weird
because we didn't add any fruit and
wondering if that flavor is from the
wine the baking powder one I can really
taste the bitterness of the baking
powder I think it's not very sweet this
cake it doesn't have a lot of honey in
it so just that little bit of baking
powder is quite noticeable in it the
texture of it is nicer but the flavour
of the first one was better now for the
yeast this texture is quite cake like
it's not exactly the same as with baking
powder but it's actually pretty good and
it tastes much more like the first one
did without the baking powder flavor in
it
I taste a little bit of yeast but it's
not very strong it's not overpowering so
if you want to recreate a 2000 year old
cake use yeast in your recipe or you
could use sourdough starter if you've
got that I didn't have any of that and
make sure you use freshly ground wheat
it gives it a really wholesome flavor to
it it's a bit like eating a whole wheat
muffin almost but it's different you
have to make it yourself and taste it
you can check out my other two hundred
year old recipes here or if you're not
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Friday
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