We celebrate Valentine's day with acts of love and boxes of chocolate,
but ancient Rome didn't have Valentine's day they had Lupercalia, and celebrated by whipping people with animal skins
and feasting on roast goat like this 2000 year old Roman recipe for goat with date sauce.
So thank you to Hellofresh for sponsoring this video as we celebrate Lupercalia
this time on Tasting History.
Now before we get to the recipe I just wanted to thank everyone who has subscribed to Tasting History
for getting us to one million subscribers, just got the Gold Play Button. It is cool, it's
huge and reflective so this will be probably the last time you'll ever see it behind me but for now
beautiful and thank you.
Now today's recipe comes from ancient Rome's best known cookbook Apicius 'De re coquinaria."
It includes several recipes for deboned lamb or kid,
and I need to clear something up because in a previous episode I did and I mentioned they were eating kid,
a lot of people thought that I meant they were eating children.
No, a kid is a baby goat.
They were not eating children, baby goat.
"Another kid or lamb deboned: 1 pint milk, 4 ounces honey,
1 ounce pepper, a little salt, a little silphium.
With the broth: a little cup of oil, a little cup of garum, a little cup of vinegar,
8 ground dates, a half pint of good wine, a little starch."
Now this recipe really stands out in the cookbook because it actually uses specific quantities unlike most of the recipes.
Even the phrase a little cup was a specific quantity because
the Latin word is acetabulum which was a small cup used for serving vinegar that was pretty uniformly about 2 ounces.
Now despite the very specific quantities the recipe doesn't give us specific instructions on exactly
how to do this so we have to do some kind of educated guessing, something
you would not have to do with recipes from today's sponsor Hellofresh.
Our Hellofresh nights have become quite the ritual here in the house. One of us cooks,
and one of us cleans, and then another night we swap.
Typically every Tuesday it's me in the kitchen cooking simply to take my mind off of stressing about
how well Tuesday's video is going because that's usually how I spend my Tuesdays.
So I'm sent to the kitchen to make a quick and easy meal from Hellofresh.
They offer an ever growing selection of meals to fit any taste or lifestyle.
Like right now I'm trying to watch my calories and Hellofresh has plenty of low calorie meal options plus
my favorite thing is because everything comes pre-portioned it helps me with portion control which is my Achilles heel.
Most recently I made the sweet chili pork bowls which had fresh bell pepper, and yellow onion,
and a sweet but light Thai chili sauce. So if you're looking to save time in the kitchen
but still have wonderful home-cooked meals visit hellofresh.com and use codetastinghistory16
for up to 16 free meals, plus three surprise gifts.
That's code tastinghistory16 at hellofresh.com.
Now for our dish today fit for a Lupercalian feast what you'll need is:
2-3 pounds or about a kilogram of goat meat.
Now the recipe says you can also use lamb but if you've never tried goat I definitely suggest it.
It's harder to find but it's really, really good. It has a little bit of a sweet quality to it and
yeah you can use any piece that you want for this recipe,
leg or really anything. I'm using shoulder because I find it the most tender.
2 cups or 475 milliliters of goat milk, or any milk actually.
1/3 cup or 115 grams of honey, 2 teaspoons black pepper, a half teaspoon of salt, a half teaspoon of asafoetida,
that was ancient Rome's replacement for silphium when silphium went extinct so that is what I'm going to be using,
plus the ancient Romans thought that it was an aphrodisiac perfect for Valentine's day.
A quarter cup or 60 milliliters of olive oil, a quarter cup or 60 milliliters of garum or other fish sauce,
a quarter cup or 60 milliliters of wine vinegar, 8 pitted dates,
one cup or 235 milliliters of wine. You can use red or white it's really up to you.
The big difference is going to just be the color of the sauce.
White's going to give you a light brown sauce, red is going to give you a dark brown sauce it's up to you.
And one tablespoon of starch.
They would have probably used like a wheat starch but that can be harder to find sometimes so go ahead and use cornstarch.
They wouldn't have had it but it's not going to affect the flavor, and it would pretty much do the same thing.
So first put the goat into either a large Ziploc bag or a dish,
then whisk the milk and honey, the pepper, salt, and asafoetida together
and pour it over the goat, and let it marinate for a few hours preferably in the fridge.
At the same time leave the dates to soak in a little water or wine.
Once the goat is marinated set it into an oven safe dish with the marinade.
You can also add some root vegetables like beets to it at the same time, it doesn't really affect the flavor of the goat
but they'll get cooked at the same time, real convenient.
Then cover the dish with a lid or some aluminum foil and pop it in the oven at 320 degrees Fahrenheit or 160 Celsius for 2.5 hours.
Then remove the lid and let it continue to roast for another half hour
or until a knife inserted can easily twist.
Then take it out of the oven and let the meat rest while you prepare the sauce.
So you'll need about a cup of the liquid that the goat roasted in with any solids strained out.
Then take the soaked dates and grind them into a pulp. Now depending on the date
you might want to use a little blender or food processor for this. Some dates mash easily, and some dates
really, really don't. You want to get this really to a puree so go ahead and use a blender.
Then add the dates to a saucepan with the liquid along with the olive oil, garum, and vinegar.
Stir that all together and then slowly heat that up to just simmering.
In a separate bowl whisk the starch into the wine until fully dissolved and then once the sauce is simmering
pour that wine into the sauce, whisk it together and let it return to a simmer
and wait until it thickens. It should take about 10 to 15 minutes
and while you wait you can go ahead and slap that Like button just like a naked ancient Roman guy would slap people on Lupercalia.
Lupercalia is perhaps the oldest of the Roman festivals,
even in ancient Rome it was considered ancient.
It was also known as 'Dies Februatus' and took place every year on the 15th of February.
Now it was associated with the brothers Romulus and Remus, and took place at the
Lupercal which was a cave where the brothers were supposedly suckled by a she-wolf, Lupa.
The cave was at the base of the Palatine Hill where sometime later Romulus would go ahead
and found a city named after him, Rome.
In the second century author Justin gives us a description of what this area looked like.
"At the foot of the mountain [Evander] built a temple to the Lycaean, whom the Greeks call Pan,
and the Romans Lupercus, the naked statue of the deity being covered with a goat-skin,
in which dressed the priests now run up and down during the Lupercalia at Rome."
There's also mention of the Caprificus there or goat fig tree
next to the sanctuary of Rumina, the goddess who watched over breastfeeding women.
Now this may seem an odd assortment: wolves, goats, breastfeeding women, but I promise they all tie into this holiday.
See the rights were held by a brotherhood called the Luperci or Brothers of the Wolf.
They were young men who made up two collegia or official associations.
One being the Quintiliani and the other the Fabiani
made up of descendants of the followers of Romulus and Remus themselves.
It's like when somebody today is like oh my ancestor was on the Mayflower or they came over with William the Conqueror,
it's those people but for ancient Rome.
Anyway every year on the 15th February they would enter the Lupercal cave,
and offer cakes which had been prepared by the Vestal virgins.
Then they would sacrifice male goats and a dog, probably as a stand-in for a wolf.
Now who exactly they were sacrificing to is not entirely known, even the ancient Romans couldn't couldn't agree on
who they were sacrificing to during the festival. What is known is that once the sacrifice was done
two members of the Luperci would go up to the altar and they would have blood from the sacrificial knives
wiped on their forehead, then they would take wool that had been dipped in milk
and wipe that blood away, and then they would burst out laughing.
After that the feast would take place where they would put all that sacrificed goat to good use,
and making sure nothing went to waste the young men would create what were known as februa which
probably comes from the word that meant purification, and probably is where we get the word February.
By the way I have such trouble saying that word. I just want to say Febuary but it's February,
but that sounds weird when it's February, I don't know how do you say it.
Anyway these februa were thongs or strips of flayed goat skin that still had the hair on it, and
what would these young men do with their thongs of goatskin?
"At this time many of the noble youths... run up and down through the city naked,
for sport and laughter striking those they meet with shaggy thongs."
Yes either naked or in some accounts nearly naked, the young men of the Luperci would run around
counterclockwise around the Palatine hill slapping people with these goatskins,
specifically slapping women with the goatskins.
Now on the face of it you'd think that that would be something that the ladies of Rome did not enjoy, but you who would be wrong.
In fact "...many women of rank purposefully get in their way, and like children at school, present their hands to be struck,
believing that the pregnant will thus be helped to an easy delivery, and the barren to pregnancy."
Told you! Wolves, goats, motherhood, it all comes together. That is what this festival was about, it was about
purification and fertility and it might seem weird to us today,
and that's okay because it even seemed weird to the Romans who were doing it.
The holiday was so ancient that its roots had been lost and
by the time of of the Roman Republic there were a lot of writers saying why are we doing all this,
and it usually came down to one word.
"Tradition!"
There were some writers who at least guessed as to why they were doing what they were doing.
Plutarch specifically wonders why they use dog and he has some guesses.
"Is it that dogs bark at the Luperci and annoy them as they race about in the city?
Or is it that the sacrifice is made to Pan,
and a dog is something dear to Pan because of his herds of goats."
Though being Greek he seems to favor the reason that he attributes to most of Rome's customs
they just stole it from the Greeks.
"Nearly all the Greeks use a dog as the sacrificial victim for ceremonies of purification."
Then he goes on this little tangent about another Greek ceremony of purification that mashes up the Greek words for
purification and puppy so it's like [puppifrication], and essentially if a person needed to be purified they would
rub themselves all around with puppies which is really cute in my mind, but I'm guessing
was less cute in reality, still pupprification, I want that.
Now the Roman poet Ovid gave his theories in his work 'Fasti'.
He traced many of the traditions to the Arcadians who worshipped Pan
and said that part of Lupercalia was to behave like Pan.
"Why, you asked do the Luperci run and since it's their custom this running, why do they strip their bodies?
Naked Pan himself loves to run swiftly on the heights and he himself suddenly takes to flight...
To this day the naked priests recall the memory of old customs and testify to those ancient ways."
Though he was writing poetry so you know grain of salt, who knows.
Now there was one Lupercalia that really stands out in history and that's the one that took place in February of 44 BC.
Now the two colleges that had been set up for the Luperci had been around for for a very long time and nothing had really changed
but that year there was a third college introduced called the Juliani which had been set up by Julius Caesar,
and was headed by Mark Antony.
Now sources differ on the exact timing and whose idea this was but at some point during the festivities
while he ran around naked Mark Antony went up to Caesar and handed him a crown,
and crowns were not something that that the ancient Romans during the Republic
really, really liked to see on their leaders,
but Julius Caesar was very special and so maybe he thought well I can get away with it.
Well Antony puts the crown on Caesar's head and "At this sight some few clap their hands but the greater number groaned,
and Caesar threw off the diadem. Antony again put it on him and Caesar threw it off...
when the people saw that Caesar prevailed they shouted for joy and at the same time applauded him because he did not accept it."
Though if people had clapped I'm gonna guess he would have kept that crown on his head, but as it was he didn't
and then I'm pretty sure everything went well for him from then on out.
4 to 6 weeks later...
Now it seems around this time the festival's popularity began to wane only to be revived a few decades later by Augustus,
Rome's first emperor, though he was always a little bit of a stick in the mud,
and so he wanted to make it a little more of a presentable holiday,
and so he put limitations on who could participate in the nudie race."
"At the Lupercalia he forbade beardless youths to join in the running."
And over the next few centuries Lupercalia's popularity grew especially with the lower classes of Rome
and even in the 4th century when pretty much all non-Christian holidays had been abolished
Lupercalia was still on the calendar.
But then in 495 Pope Gelasius finally decided to put an end to the holiday proclaiming
"Lupercalia is a public crime... an instrument of depravity, which your mind bearing testimony against itself,
blushes to fulfill."
But the Senate actually protested saying that the holiday celebration was integral
to the well-being and the safety of Rome so the holiday ended up sticking around for a little while longer.
Now some evidence suggests that the following year in 496 on the day before Lupercalia February 14th
the Pope decided to have a new feast day proclaimed in dedication to a martyr named Saint Valentine.
There is no evidence to suggest that this had anything to do with Lupercalia.
It wasn't an effort to to replace the holiday or anything like that.
It just happens that they ended up at about the same time of year.
If it was a need to replace it why wouldn't you put it on the 15th but
anyway you know a lot of people today do make the
correlation and because of that instead of wooing your love with chocolates this year
might I suggest bringing back an old tradition and woo them with roast goat.
So once your sauce is thickened pour it on the goat and serve,
and here we are ancient Roman roast goat fit for a Lupercalian feast.
So it's really tender almost like a pot roast, but it's- but it's goat but
even just the scent of goat meat there is like a sweetness.
It's very different, if you've never tried it I definitely suggest you do. I'm curious because of the marinade
if I'm going to lose any of that though with all of these other flavors,
so let's give it a shot.
Hmm!
Bravo to the recipe writer who wrote down these specific quantities, because
they don't need any changing at all it. It's a wonderfully balanced dish,
there are a lot of ingredients in this marinade and the sauce and you're getting all new flavors
because of the combinations. Nothing is really jumping out.
The goat is wonderfully tender as I expected
and it does have a little bit of that sweetness though you do lose a little bit of it because of
of those other flavors popping through. The one flavor that does shine and only at the very end
is the pepper and you get a a little spiciness to it which is actually really nice, but it's it's
that kind of foreign ancient Roman flavor profile that you get from the asafoetida and the garum, and everything,
wonderfully balanced, excellent recipe.
So thank you all again for getting the channel to a million subscribers.
Again, the Gold Play button probably will be in a different room after this because it is so shiny, but thank you again.
Make sure to follow me on Instagram @tastinghistorywithmaxmiller and I will see you next time on Tasting History.