York Castle Museum

Roman Cookery

We called on York College catering students to help us understand how our cooking pots dating from Roman times would have been used.

A pot in our replica Roman oven

Before this project, we believed that the Romans stored charcoal in clay structures with flat surfaces on top, to light fires and cook on, like modern hobs.

But the students found this did not work when they experimented using a replica oven and pots. A much more effective method was to use the clay structure as an oven and put the pots, containing all the ingredients, inside surrounded by the hot charcoal.

When the pots came out of the oven after using this method, the marks left behind on them matched the marks on real Roman pots from our museum.

Students from York College at work

The students demonstrated Roman cooking in several outdoor events for the public, using similar ingredients to those used in Roman times. Meals would have been cooked slowly in wine, accompanied by some vegetables or pulses.

They also experimented making a typical fish sauce – recipes exist for this from Roman times when it was typically made in huge vats in North Africa. A kilo of chopped sardines was mixed with half a kilo of salt, and left in a bucket in a warm place (a greenhouse) for three weeks. The solids were then strained out to leave a salty, fishy liquid. Delicious!