In ancient Greece spartan warriors were renowned for three things:
their bravery in battle, their pithy comebacks, and
their atrocious cuisine. Their most infamous dish being melas
zomos, or black broth. Just looking at it makes you wonder if Leonidas's
declaration of "tonight we dine in hell" was less of a threat, and more of a
promise of better things to come, but regardless of my own personal
feelings on the look of this dish, today in the name of food history,
I'm going to do my best to recreate spartan black broth,
and try to find out what in the background of a Spartan warrior
would lead them to sup on such a soup. This time
on Tasting History.
The Greek writer Athenaeus tells us of a man from Sybaris
who tried melas zomos, afterwards saying it is natural for the Spartans to be the
bravest of men for any man in his senses would rather
die ten thousand times over than live as miserably as this. Now that's a one
star Yelp review if i've ever heard one, but what caused such disgust and vitriol
for this spartan broth? Well unfortunately as so
many things from antiquity we don't actually have
a recipe, but we do have a fairly good idea of the main
ingredients. There's mentioned that it was made with pork and then because of
the black color we can deduce that it was also made with pork blood,
and then it would also need vinegar, because vinegar would stop that blood
from coagulating. Other than that we're kind of guessing
what would be in it. Historians believe that it also probably
had herbs, and salt, and maybe even onions so i'm going to
put all of those in just for flavor's sake. Now when it comes to
the process of making our soup we can rely
on modern soups for that because the process tends to be uniform
wherever they have blood soups. German schwarzsauer, filipino dinuguan and a whole
host of Eastern European blood soups. So those are a lot more
flavorful, going to have a lot of ingredients so
we're going to be a little bit more Spartan in ours but the process should
remain about the same. So for this soup you will need two pounds,
or one kilogram of pork leg, or other pork product.
Two cups, or a half liter of pig blood. Now finding pig blood,
not always the easiest thing but the best place to start is going to be a
Chinese market. They might even have fresh pig blood, and
that's the best. That's what you really want,
but a lot of times they're not going to have that. Instead they have these bricks
of kind of coagulated pig blood which will
work just fine, we'll just have to go through an extra
step during the recipe. 1 cup or 235 milliliters
of white wine vinegar, 2 tablespoons of olive oil,
1 teaspoon of salt or more to taste, 4 cups or 1 liter of water,
3 bay leafs, and 1 chopped onion. So first go ahead and put a large stock
pot over medium-high heat, and add in your olive oil. Then toss in
your onions and stirring them around every once in a while
let them cook until they've be,ome nice and tender, or lightly browned.
about 10 minutes. Then add in your pork and give that about 10 minutes
also to brown. Then pour in your 1 cup of vinegar,
then 3 or 4 cups of water. Now if you have fresh blood put all 4 cups of water
in, but if you have that kind of coagulated brick
of pig's blood then save one cup back because we're going to need that in our
process to liquefy the rest of the blood. Then add
in your salt and your bay leaves and stir everything
together. Then raise the heat to high until the soup is boiling at which point
you're going to lower the heat to medium-low,
and let it simmer just until the pork is cooked about 45 minutes to an hour.
Now so far this kind of sounds like my granny's pork stew though maybe with
a lot more vinegar and a few less potatoes and other delicious ingredients,
but overall nothing too crazy but we are
about to add that last crucial and oddest ingredient that might
turn some people away - the blood. Mwahahahhaha 3:)
I'm sorry. 0:) So if you have fresh blood pour it into the soup right now, stir it
around and let it simmer for about another 15 minutes,
but if you have that brick of blood break it up a little bit and put it into
a blender, then add that last cup of water and
blend to your heart's content. Now there might still be some chunks in there,
they're not going to hurt you but if you want you can strain them out
just to make a little bit more of a smooth broth
than chunky. Either way pour it into the pot and let it simmer for 15 more
minutes. Now despite what we may feel about this
soup today it's clear that it helped to build
Spartan muscles. Not those muscles, these muscles. But one
cannot become a Spartan on soup alone so let us look at what else in the life
of a Spartan would lead you to become such a warrior.
Plutarch tells a story of a man named Dionysius who was the ruler or the
tyrant of Sicily, and Dionysius had heard tell
of this magical black broth of the Spartans which turned
them into such hardened warriors so he wanted to try some for himself. So
he got himself a Spartan slave who happened to be a cook,
and told him make me a bowl of this so I too can become a great warrior,
but the moment that he tasted it he spat it out and
the the cook said though i'm guessing trying to stifle a laugh
"your majesty it is necessary to have exercised
in the Spartan manner, and to have bathed in the Eurotas,
in order to relish this broth". i.e if you ain't a spartan to begin with
you better just stick to chicken noodle. And reading this story made me wonder
just what do you have to do to create a Spartan warrior?
Well for that we should go back to the very beginning
with the birth of a little Spartan baby boy, we'll call him
Billy, Billy the Spartan. Now the moment the cord is cut it's time for Billy's
first bath, but no need for water. No, no a jug of
cheap wine will do just fine. See Spartan mothers believed that if the
baby was weak then the wine would make them go into convulsions and die,
but if baby Billy was strong then he would let it roll off him like merlot
off a duck's back. Spartan mothers were not known for their
maternal instinct, there's actually a great story about a
young man going off to war and his mother hands him his shield
and says "either come back with this or on it". Thanks for the encouragement mom.
Now if Billy passed mommy's wine test then it was time for daddy to take his
turn. He would take the infant to the Gerousia
or the council of elders to be examined. iIf the baby looked sturdy then he was
assigned a plot of land, and given back to the father to raise
but if little Billy didn't look so good then he would be thrown into the
Apothetae chasm at the foot of Mount Taÿgetus.
Now don't worry, modern archaeology disputes this because
all the bodies found there have been adults. Now provided Billy avoided the
pit he would be handed off to a nurse to be raised for the first few years of his
life, but with Spartan nurses there was none
of this namby-pamby swaddling and coddling. No, no they would be left naked
and crying in a dark room until they stopped whimpering,
and learned to be okay being alone. Sounds like something my therapist would
now charge $200 an hour for. Spartan nurses were so
prized for their skill at neglect, and complete lack of empathy that
wealthy families from all over Greece would often bring Spartan nurses into
their own home to raise their children. The great
Athenian General Alcibiades had a Spartan nurse named Amicla,
and he turned out great so maybe there is something to it.
Now assuming little Billy made it past nurse Ratched to the ripe old age of
seven he would be entered into the Agoge which
was a training program meant to make Spartan warriors. On the
first day of school he would be assigned to a troop similar to the houses
at Hogwarts because for the next few years they would do
everything together. They had their hair clipped short, forced to go around
barefoot and usually just went without clothes of
any kind until they were 12 when they got a single red cloak
that would have to last them the entire year. Often not
bathing more than once or twice during the entire time.
So one can only imagine the rankness of their sleeping quarters where all the
boys in the troop slept together on reed mats that they had
to make by pulling out reeds from the Eurotus river
without the aid of a knife. They spent their days learning the bare minimum of
reading and writing, and more often spent time in mock battle,
or beating up helots. Now helots were the bottom rung of
Spartan society, even though they were the vast majority
of Spartan society. You could basically beat them up with
impunity. Now if no helots happened to be around
then it was time for a taunting. "Your mother was a hamster, and your
father smelled of elderberries." Spartan youths
were encouraged to mock and taunt each other to a mean
degree without any conviviality, just mean-spirited mockery, and the victim
had to take it without getting upset but the moment that they
said to cease it had to stop. So that's nice I guess. "Now go away or I
shall taunt you a second time." Now a morning of
beating up helots and taunting your friends is sure to work up an appetite,
so at this point it was time to eat but unfortunately for little Billy
there wasn't gonna be much on the menu. Spartan boys would accompany their
fathers to the Syssitia which was kind of similar to a modern
day military mess, but it was something that you belonged to.
Once there they would have the barest of rations sometimes being fortunate enough
to have a kammatides which was something like a cake made
of olive oil and barley groats wrapped in laurel
leaves. Sounds delish, but if Billy was still hungry after that
then he would be encouraged to steal whatever else he wanted
probably usually from those same helots who he beat up that morning.
Now if he was caught stealing he would be flogged mercilessly,
sometimes until the point just before death.
Not for stealing but for getting caught. Plutarch tells a story of a boy who had
stolen a fox and he was carrying it around,
and then somebody approached him and rather than be detected
he hid the fox under his cloak but then the fox ended up disemboweling him with
his claws and his teeth, and the little boy died. Moral of the
story: steal vegetables. Now if little Billy
doesn't have his guts ripped out by a woodland creature
and makes it to the age of 20 it's time to join the syssitia
and the Spartan army but you have to be voted in.
Now if he doesn't get voted in that first year he has until the age of 30,
he can try over and over again all the way until 30. That's also the
year that he can finally get married and move out into his own home but if he
hits 30 and still hasn't been voted into the syssitia
then he's considered a disgrace and will never achieve full
citizenship, but good news for Billy he got voted in
and now he's a full member of the syssitia and the food is about to get
a little bit better. Athanaeus quoting disiercus
says the dinner is at first served separately to each member
and there is no sharing of any kind with one's neighbor.
Afterward there is a barley cake as large as each desires,
and for drinking a cup is set beside them to use whenever he is thirsty.
The same meat dish is given to all on every occasion,
a piece of boiled pork. Besides this there is nothing whatsoever
except of course the melas zomos made from this meat.
There may possibly be an olive or cheese, or a fig,
or something similar. So now that's the basic meal but afterward on occasions
there would be something called the epaiklon which was a kind of forced
potluck. "Following the meal, it is customary for
something to be provided by several persons,
a dish prepared in their own homes, and called
epaiklon. No one is in the habit of contributing anything which he has
bought by purchase in the market, for they contribute not to satisfy their
pleasure or the greed of the stomach but to give evidence of their own
prowess in the hunt... the cooks announce to the company the
names of those who bring in anything for the occasion,
in order that they may realize the labor spent upon the chase
and the zeal manifested for themselves." So just like today it should be homemade,
you can't just go down and get yourself some brownie bites at the Piggly Wiggly,
and I love the part where they announce all of the dishes that people have made.
It's like "look everyone Gladys May made her famous country chicken casserole,
yummy!" *clap clap So at these second breakfasts of sorts
Athenaeus says that the Spartan warriors would eat
fresh greens beans, wheat bread, and even sometimes little honey cakes called
fisiquilos so clearly Spartan meals have a much worse rap than they probably
deserve, but in comparison with a lot of their
neighbors they were still very meager. According to Herodotus when the
Persian King Xerxes fled from Greece he left everything behind including his
lavish war tent. Coming across the tent the Spartan
general Pausanias was struck by the opulence,
and you know wanting to see how the other half lived he decided to sit down
on one of the golden silver embroidered couches,
and commanded the captured Persian cooks to cook him a meal
fit for a general. Then he asked his own Spartan cooks
to do the same. When both meals were set out before him
he just laughed and called in the other Greek generals to say
"Men of Greece, I ask you here to show you the folly of the Persians
who, living in this style, came to Greece to rob us
of our poverty." So yeah, you can kind of see why the cook told old Dionysius that
you're just not going to get it if you weren't raised a Spartan,
and I was not raised a Spartan. No, no it's true but i'm still going to try
this melas zomos for myself.nSo after 15 minutes of
simmering, or more, you can really let this simmer all day if you want, but
the soup is now ready to try. And here we are
melas zomos: Spartan black broth. So yeah,
here we go, um you know the it smells vinegary
as I expected but it also smells of pork. It doesn't smell
bad, it just smells like like pork stew. Um,
here we go. I'm gonna just try the broth at first...
X_X
Hmm, it's not bad. I'm gonna take, take a taste with the
meat now.
It's vinegary. It's fine! I think those other Greeks were just
being babies, this is not terrible. It does not look appetizing, and
maybe that's you know that's what they were kind of going off
of, but it's fine. I wouldn't want it. I wouldn't, I'm never going to crave this,
um partly because it's just kind of flavorless in a way. I would love some
more herbs and spices, and maybe they used more,
we don't know. It's pretty Spartan which is which is what it should be
Yeah, there it is Spartan black broth, don't know what all the fuss is about
except for the look which is horrific. So while i'm not going
to enthusiastically endorse you making this
it's kind of interesting, and how often do you get to eat black food? Not too
often, um but maybe maybe just make it for
yourself, and your closest friends who you know
won't abandon you because i think if you did this for a dinner party that would
be your last dinner party... Anyway, make sure to like this video
and I will see you next time on Tasting History.