{"id":90797,"date":"2024-11-27T02:00:57","date_gmt":"2024-11-27T07:00:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=90797"},"modified":"2024-08-01T21:20:26","modified_gmt":"2024-08-02T01:20:26","slug":"the-deadly-job-of-royal-food-taster","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2024\/11\/27\/the-deadly-job-of-royal-food-taster\/","title":{"rendered":"The Deadly Job of Royal Food Taster"},"content":{"rendered":"<p align=\"center\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"854\" height=\"480\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/Md8stUmigAU?si=a-4yYriatfeZ3UEb\" title=\"YouTube video player\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<blockquote><p><strong>Tasting History with Max Miller<\/strong><br \/>\nPublished Jul 23, 2024<\/p>\n<p>Saut\u00e9ed mushrooms in a honey, long pepper, and garum glaze<\/p>\n<p><em>City\/Region<\/em>: Rome<br \/>\n<em>Time Period<\/em>: 1st Century<\/p>\n<p>Food tasters checking for poison aren&#8217;t around so much anymore, but it was an important job for thousands of years. But what happens when the food taster is the one adding in the poison?<\/p>\n<p>Emperor Claudius found this out the hard way when he supposedly ate some of his favorite mushrooms, and then became the victim of a double-poisoning by his taster and his physician.<\/p>\n<p>We can\u2019t know for sure what Emperor Claudius&#8217;s favorite mushroom dish was, but I wouldn&#8217;t be surprised if it was this. I don&#8217;t care for the texture of mushrooms, but the flavor is excellent. The sweetness from the honey, spiciness from the long pepper, and the earthiness of the mushrooms combine for a complex dish that is delicious.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<p><em><strong>Another Method for Mushrooms<\/strong><br \/>\nPlace the chopped stalks in a clean pan, adding pepper, lovage, and a little honey. Mix with garum. Add a little oil.<br \/>\n\u2014 Apicius de re coquinaria, 1st century<\/em><\/p>\n<\/ul>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p><strong>Ingredients<\/strong>:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<p>1 tablespoon honey<br \/>\n1 tablespoon garum*<br \/>\n1\/2 lb (225 g) small mushrooms, whatever kind you like<br \/>\n2 tablespoons olive oil<br \/>\n1 teaspoon ground long pepper* or black pepper<br \/>\n2-3 tablespoons minced fresh lovage* or celery leaves<br \/>\n*See notes below.<\/p>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Instructions<\/strong>:<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>Whisk the honey and garum together, then whisk in the pepper.<\/li>\n<li>Cut the stems off of the mushrooms (don&#8217;t throw them away!) and slice each mushroom cap in half.<\/li>\n<li>Heat the olive oil in a large pan (you want it large enough so that the mushrooms can be in a single layer) over medium-high heat.<\/li>\n<li>Add the mushroom caps and stems and saut\u00e9 them for 2 to 3 minutes, making sure that they all get coated with oil.<\/li>\n<li>Add the honey mixture and stir to evenly coat the mushrooms. Sprinkle in the lovage. Reduce the heat to medium-low and simmer until most of the liquid has evaporated and you&#8217;re left with a lovely glaze, about 3 to 5 minutes.<\/li>\n<li>Serve them forth, no royal food taster required. <\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p><strong>Notes<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Garum was a fermented fish sauce that was used in a lot of ancient Roman cooking. You can buy a modern equivalent or use an Asian fish sauce. For this recipe, I used 1 tablespoon of my homemade garum, which is less salty than modern Asian fish sauces. If you use an Asian fish sauce, use 1 to 1.5 teaspoons.<br \/>\nLong pepper was very popular in ancient Rome. It&#8217;s hotter than black pepper and has a more aromatic, almost flowery quality to it that&#8217;s wonderful.<br \/>\nLovage is a mildly sweet herb that can be hard to find. You can use celery leaf as a subsitute. <strong>Do not eat lovage if you are pregnant!<\/strong><br \/>\nLink to long pepper: <a href=\"https:\/\/amzn.to\/3ui5j5L\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">https:\/\/amzn.to\/3ui5j5L<\/a><br \/>\nLink to modern garum: <a href=\"https:\/\/amzn.to\/3ulTKKW\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">https:\/\/amzn.to\/3ulTKKW<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Tasting History with Max Miller Published Jul 23, 2024 Saut\u00e9ed mushrooms in a honey, long pepper, and garum glaze City\/Region: Rome Time Period: 1st Century Food tasters checking for poison aren&#8217;t around so much anymore, but it was an important job for thousands of years. But what happens when the food taster is the one [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[62,74,7,370],"tags":[1513,1276,588,1514,396,1388,1343,1442],"class_list":["post-90797","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-europe","category-food","category-history","category-middle-east","tag-cleopatra","tag-cooking","tag-egypt","tag-marcusantonius","tag-monarchy","tag-recipes","tag-romanempire","tag-tastinghistory"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-nCt","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90797","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=90797"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90797\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":90798,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90797\/revisions\/90798"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=90797"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=90797"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=90797"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}