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.

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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.