Recreating an Ancient Roman Dinner of Death

It’s the year 89. A group of Roman senators has arrived at a banquet hosted by Emperor Domitian. Instead of a warm, convivial scene of free-flowing wine and comfortable couches, they find a totally black room, from the walls to the dishes. At each of their seats stands a personalized tombstone. Boys, naked and painted black, enter “like phantoms” and dance about the room. And the food? Not only is it black as well, but the menu consists of foods typically offered to the dead.

According to the third-century historian Dio Cassius, who provides the sole account of the dinner in his Roman History, the effect was pure terror. As they tucked into their meal, their host talked “only upon topics relating to death and slaughter.” Each senator, Dio writes, “feared and trembled and was kept in constant expectation of having his throat cut the next moment.”

Ever since I first wrote about this hellish banquet in 2021, I haven’t stopped thinking about the emperor’s macabre meal. I’m not the only one obsessed with the story. Mary Beard, a Cambridge professor and the author of SPQR, considers it one of her “favourite ancient anecdotes.” Food historian Jane Levi calls it “emblematic of Domitian’s dark status as a murderous Emperor.” And Classics expert Charles Leslie Murison describes it as “a classic illustration of autocratic sadism.”

But it’s almost too perfect. While everyone seems to agree that it’s a great story, few believe it actually went down as Dio Cassius describes. That’s why I embarked on a mission to investigate the dastardly dinner, its host, its historical context, and its possible menu. What would a Roman emperor serve to scare the hell out of his guests? How might palace cooks have colored these foods with that terrifying black hue? And what can the horror show of Domitian’s dinner tell us about the fears, social mores, and dining customs of first-century Roman elites?

To answer these questions, I teamed up with culinary archaeologist Farrell Monaco. Our journey took us from culinary-themed graves and excavated offerings in the cemeteries of Timgad and Pompeii to the banquet tables of other morbid Roman hosts to the pages of ancient cookbooks. We consulted historians, pored over the diaries and letters of Roman elites, stained our fingers with cuttlefish ink, and kneaded dark orbs of bread dough.

After a few months, I sat down to my own Black Banquet. With recipes by Monaco, the menu offered a night-hued spread of ancient loaves, roasted fish, sweet stuffed dates, and more—a meal fit for a macabre-minded ruler in first-century Rome.

But before we dig in, it’s only polite to meet our host.

On the part of everybody but Domitian there was dead silence, as if they were already in the realms of the dead, and the emperor himself conversed only upon topics relating to death and slaughter. —Dio Cassius, Roman History

Titus Flavius Domitianus was the third member of his family to serve as the emperor of Rome. Rumors of cruelty swirled around him from the beginning of his reign: Although most accounts attribute the death of his older brother, Emperor Titus, to a natural illness, some have speculated that Domitian (the shortened name was his title after he came into power) may have played a role in hastening his demise.

From ancient Roman writers to modern historians, scholars have long portrayed Domitian as a vicious tyrant. Accounts have grouped him in with Rome’s “bad emperors,” a cast of villains that includes Nero, Caligula, and Commodus (the latter might sound familiar due to his appearance in Gladiator). In History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Edward Gibbon calls him “timid, inhuman Domitian.” And an oft-repeated anecdote describes the emperor whiling away the hours in his room torturing flies. But recent scholarship has taken a new look at Domitian, praising him for his ambitious building programs, currency reform, and fairly compensating the army.

The reality of Domitian’s reign was somewhere in the middle. In his 1992 biography, The Emperor Domitian, historian Brian Jones casts the emperor as a “ruthless but efficient autocrat” who made some great strides, but ran afoul of the senate by regularly disregarding their counsel, severely punishing enemies, and draining the treasury. These tensions came to a head when members of Domitian’s own court assassinated him in the year 96.

Fae Amiro, a postdoc at Western University in Canada, extensively examined written and archaeological records surrounding Domitian after his assassination in her thesis, “The Post-Mortem Sanctions Against the Emperor Domitian.” As with many assassinated emperors, Amiro notes, there was a clear campaign to smear Domitian to justify the legitimacy of the new regime of his successor, Emperor Nerva.

“Often with the assassination of the previous emperor … you see the next group really try to distance themselves as far as possible from them and delegitimize the last reign. Because if Domitian was this popular, legitimate emperor and he was assassinated, and now you’ve taken over through the people who caused the assassination, that’s not a good look. The only acceptable story is that he was a tyrant,” explains Amiro.

Two writers who pushed this narrative were Suetonius and Pliny the Younger, both of whom covered the fallout after Domitian’s assassination with relish. (Pliny in particular writes of the “delight” of the crowds bringing Domitian’s statues down after his death.) However, neither writer mentions the Black Banquet of Dio’s later Roman History. Since both writers were not only critics but contemporaries of Domitian’s, it’s doubtful that they’d hold back on such a damning story. “There’s no reason why they wouldn’t include all the negative details if they had them,” Amiro says.

Instead, it’s Dio, writing in the early 200s and over a century after Domitian’s death, who provides the sole account of the death-themed dinner. Amiro notes this is part of a pattern in Dio’s work, where the writer tries to draw parallels between Domitian and the “bad” emperor of his own day, Commodus. A frustrated senator serving under Commodus, Dio likely saw a story like the Black Banquet as a powerful way to depict the tensions between tyrannical rulers and the aristocracy.

With these biases in mind, it’s possible that there never was a Black Banquet and this was simply a terrifying tale used to represent the sadistic theatrics of a tyrant. There’s just one problem with that theory: Encountering death at the dinner table was pretty normal for elites in ancient Rome.

And first he set beside each of them a slab shaped like a gravestone, bearing the guest’s name and also a small lamp, such as hang in tombs. Next comely naked boys, likewise painted black, entered like phantoms, and after encircling the guests in an awe-inspiring dance took up their stations at their feet. —Dio Cassius, Roman History

When Roman aristocrats sat to dine at the turn of the millennium, death was often nearby. Memento mori motifs ranged from skull-covered cups to dining-room mosaics of skeletons hoisting jugs to puppet-like skeletal party favors that danced when shaken. This contrast of death with convivial pleasures like feasting were meant to encourage diners to enjoy earthly joys while they could.

In an article in the Times Literary Supplement, Mary Beard points out that death-themed banquets even predated Dio’s account. She cites a letter written by the philosopher Seneca in the years before his death in 65, describing a senator known for hosting dinners that concluded with mock funerals for himself. The host, Seneca writes, would be “carried from the dining-room to his chamber, while eunuchs applauded and sang in Greek to a musical accompaniment: ‘He has lived his life, he has lived his life!’” In this portrait, the senator comes across as narcissistic, as Seneca questions his “debased motive” for the performance.

But the most well-known example of a mock-funerary feast comes from The Satyricon, Petronius’s satire of Roman decadence. Written during Nero’s reign (54–68), the novel tells the story of Trimalchio, an ostentatious freedman who concludes his banquet by playing with a skeleton figure, dictating what he’d like on his tombstone, and ordering a funeral march to be played.

In hosting his own death-focused feast, Domitian “seems here to have been simply carrying to extremes a fashion current for over a century,” historian Katherine Dunbabin writes in her book Roman Banquets. Although, she notes, as “the fashion vanishes from the literature” after this time, “Domitian may indeed already have been a little out of date.”

“Often when we’re reading a lot of these writers, it’s not so much that they’re making things up from whole cloth,” Amiro says. “But a lot of the time, it’s more that they take what was probably a normal, positive thing at the time, and they spin it in this more extreme way.” She compares the Black Banquet to the notorious story of Caligula making his horse a consul, which could’ve been rooted in an actual act that was blown out of proportion. “It’s possible that he had a negative relationship with the senate, and he was just trolling them. But instead he gets presented as doing it out of insanity as opposed to perhaps disdain.”

Other historians agree. In Rebellion and Reconstruction: Galba to Domitian, Charles Leslie Murison writes of the Black Banquet, “Dio has failed to understand the joke or has, perhaps, deliberately misrepresented the occasion in order to malign Domitian.” In his paper “The Character of Domitian,” historian K.H. Waters writes, “Dio is normally a somewhat humourless writer, but on this occasion he has surpassed himself.” And in her article, Beard posits that the dinner might not have been a prank, but rather a philosophical exercise in pondering mortality: “I fear that poor old Domitian may well have had his profound intentions ruined by a cynical historian, with a strong capacity for misinterpretation.”

Whether he was trolling, waxing philosophical, or just having a bit of fun, what kind of menu would an emperor serve to round out the funerary themes? Unfortunately, accounts of death-themed dinners omit details about the food, instead focusing on the performance and pomp surrounding the meal. To fill in these blanks, we must look beyond the banquet hall and venture into the necropolis.

After this all the things that are commonly offered at the sacrifices to departed spirits were likewise set before the guests, all of them black and in dishes of a similar color. —Dio Cassius, Roman History

When I decided to recreate Domitian’s dinner, my first call was to Farrell Monaco. As a culinary archaeologist, Monaco uses a combination of archaeological, artistic, and textual evidence to reverse-engineer ancient Roman recipes. Her projects range from round loaves of panis quadratus bread to a Pompeiian pub menu to a sourdough starter fit for Pliny the Elder.

When it came to finding foods “offered at the sacrifices to departed spirits,” Monaco went looking for what archaeologists had unearthed from the cemeteries of the first-century Roman Empire. Families often ate—and offered—meals at the burial site right after the funeral, again nine days after the interment, and on subsequent anniversaries. Cemetery meals and offerings were so important that some mausoleums even came with built-in kitchens, and some interment gravesites featured pipes for pouring libations to those buried below.

But what foods were these families offering? Monaco looked to Pompeii, which is not only a treasure trove for archaeological finds, but a particularly useful one for our purposes. Mount Vesuvius forever froze the city beneath volcanic ash in the year 79, a mere decade before Domitian’s alleged banquet. Monaco points to a 2008 paper in which archaeobotanists examined carbonized figs, grapes, bread, apples, dates, chickpeas, and walnut and hazelnut shells from a family’s burial plot in a necropolis on the city’s outskirts. The scientists concluded that the cemetery’s food offerings were burned intentionally before the volcanic eruption, “as part of the ritual, which took place in the funerary enclosure.”

Another noteworthy aspect of the offerings? Just how un-noteworthy they were. Rather than exceptional ceremonial dishes, the paper’s authors stated that the offerings were “the staple food of everyday life” and, with the exception of dates (which were likely imported from North Africa), all came from local crops.

When it came to the upper class, the offerings were also the stuff of daily life. “Even in Etruscan settings like in the mortuary tombs in Tarquina, you still see items on the banqueting benches that are consumed in the everyday: sausages, grapes, eggs, bread. There aren’t any grand looking cakes or any foods that look out of the ordinary,” Monaco says.

As she mulled over ways to pull these findings together into a menu, Monaco came upon photos of a curious style of grave (or stela) located among the ruins of Timgad, an ancient Roman city in what is now Algeria. Each stela’s base, Monaco noticed, was engraved with images of full spreads of various dishes: small round loaves of bread (unmistakably the crisscross-topped panis quadratus), fish, eggs, and ambiguous sides (which Monaco says are likely beans, peas, cheese, or dates). Each food item sat inside depressions representing bowls or platters, alongside utensils. It was a meal fit for the dead—or, perhaps, a death-obsessed emperor.

“Yes, it’s an artistic representation, so there’s some symmetry to it, but if they modeled it that way, then that is how they would have set an average table,” Monaco says. “So I saw that and went, Oh, my God. I’ve got my table setting.”

Monaco’s table imagines the senators settling into their tombstone-marked couches before a symmetrical spread of roasted mullet; tiny loaves of panis quadratus; decorative charcoal-colored eggs; pepper-encrusted dates; and dressed chickpeas—all colored a deep black and sitting upon plates and bowls of the same color.

To turn the emperor’s dinner black, Monaco notes that palatial cooks would’ve reached for ingredients like cuttlefish ink or black pepper, as recommended by ancient Roman chefs like Apicius. Cuttlefish ink is still a delicacy exported from the Mediterranean and, despite its marine origins, does not impart a particularly fishy flavor.

Any aristocrat who sampled a morsel of such a meal as Domitian’s might not have enjoyed the naked phantom-boys that circled the table, but perhaps they would’ve savored the earthy flavor and depth that the cuttlefish ink imparted to a loaf of panis quadratus. Existing in a culinary uncanny valley, the bread would’ve reminded them of the large round loaves they’d see in the city’s bakeries but smaller and with a disturbingly dark hue.

Or perhaps the guests would—if only to be polite—take a portion of the pisa in sepia—a take on Apicius’s “Another pea or bean recipe,” consisting of chickpeas dressed in cuttlefish ink, sweet wine, the seasoning known as asafoetida, and fish sauce, or garum. They might admire the beans’ pleasantly tangy punch while also trying to ignore the unsettling feeling they got from their shiny black dressing. Black beans featured prominently on Lemuria, the festival when families cast out lemures, or malevolent spirits of the dead (“sort of like Rome’s annual mass-exorcism event,” Monaco says). After midnight, the head of a household would walk barefoot around a room, throwing black beans over his shoulder into the darkness, repeating “with these beans I redeem me and mine … Ghosts of my fathers, go forth!”

“If the beans were cast to the darkness and the darkness is where the lemures are … what does this tell us about Domitian offering black food to his guests?” Monaco wrote to me in one of our many emails throughout our project. “Does he think they’re ghouls and demons? Spirits (senatorial?) that he wants to leave so he can press on with an authoritarian rule?”

While he pondered the meaning of these unusual beans, a senator’s gaze might fall upon the roasted red mullet in the table’s center. The fish itself would be no surprise. Monaco notes that Pliny the Elder cataloged several mullet varieties that were popular in the Mediterranean, and a mosaic from Pompeii displays a red mullet among other fish enjoyed by ancient Romans. But instead of its brilliant red scales, the mullet would be a sleek onyx (Monaco adapted Apicius’s “Sauce for Roasted Baby Tuna” with a cuttlefish ink twist). For the well-read guest, the black fish might even bring to mind an image from Ovid’s first-century poem Fasti, in which a hag offers fire-roasted fish to a goddess on the last day of Parentalia, a festival to honor dead family members. In that scene, the hag smears the fish with pitch and impales it with a bronze spike; Monaco recommends just sticking to the glaze and roasting it in the oven.

As their imperial host talked only of death and slaughter, it would be understandable if a senator sought a sweet distraction. He might find one by reaching into a dark bowl of dates. Adapted from Apicius’s “Dulcia Domestica,” Monaco’s recipe stuffs the dates with almonds and coats them in a mixture of honey and enough black pepper to create a charcoal tint, resulting in a sweet that comes with a hit of heat. According to Monaco, the use of the spice—which was likely long pepper and not the peppercorn that came to dominate the spice world much later—was also common in Roman funerary rites.

But Monaco interprets the heavy use of black pepper a different way: She thinks that Dio’s account smacks of satire, akin to The Satyricon, and that even the term “Black Banquet” could’ve been a cheeky dig at “an elite dinner and dining setting that used so much black pepper it rendered the plates, people, and walls black,” she says.

Pepper, after all, was very expensive. “We’ll never be one-hundred percent sure if that banquet actually did take place. But from my experience of studying and writing about Trimalchio’s banquet and looking at the commentary on the nouveau riche, I feel that it’s a similar thing that’s happening here,” she adds. “It’s another stab at Roman society.”

As I cooked and then tucked into my own feast, I pondered the various interpretations of the Black Banquet: Is it satire? History? Misinterpretation? Beyond its black hue, the food Monaco created was simply delicious: the bread earthy and rich; the dressed chickpeas pungent and creamy; the fish complemented by a sweet, tangy glaze; the dates sweet and spicy. Of course, there were omissions: I didn’t have the naked boys dancing around the table nor did I add tombstones engraved with my guests’ names.

The meal was, overall, a tasty but aesthetically unusual dinner. And, after my research, I’m starting to think that may have been all Domitian’s dinner was, too, plus some additional theatrics. Sure, he may have been an eccentric host whose authority lent more danger to the macabre themes, but Dio’s depiction treated the dinner like it was a horrifying anomaly, when memento-mori meals were not that unusual in turn-of-the-millennium Rome. In fact, Domitian’s greatest crime may have been that his over-the-top banquet was just a little tacky.

But it’s also this gauche extravagance that gives Dio’s story staying power. In the Renaissance, Monaco says, opulent feasts took a cue from the Black Banquet as European elites brought their own death-themed dinners to life, a trend that involved “romanticizing the past, perhaps taking these writings literally and staging banquets for all of your wealthy friends so that you could do something different and extraordinary.”

“I think that’s kind of what we’re doing here,” she adds, reflecting on our project. “But we’re having fun with it like, ‘Hey, what if this did happen? Here’s what you could do.’”

Want to create your own Black Banquet? Check out Monaco’s recipes below. Whether you want to add the dancing ghosts and personalized tombstones, though, is up to you.

All Recipes by Farrell Monaco

Panes Nigri

Black, “Carbonized” Panis Quadratus Loaves

Some of the panis quadratus loaves depicted on the bases of funerary stelae in North Africa are much smaller than the archaeological loaves excavated at Pompeii. This informs us that, outside bakeries, these loaves may have been made in smaller sizes. Our recipe incorporates cuttlefish ink, an ingredient that not only produces a loaf that is quite delicious but also allows the loaf to appear “carbonized” once fully baked.

Ingredients
3 ½ cups (750 grams) white bread flour
1 ¼ cups (200 grams) whole wheat flour
½ cups (100 grams) sourdough starter or sponge*
2 cups (445 grams) warm water
4 tablespoons (70 grams) cuttlefish ink**
2 teaspoons (10 grams) salt

*If a starter is not readily available, a sponge can be made by dissolving 5 grams (1 teaspoon) of baker’s yeast into 50 grams (1/4 cup) of water, then mixing 50 g (1/4 cup) of white bread flour into the liquid to form a sponge. Let the sponge rest until it rises, then add it to the recipe as outlined below.

Equipment

Parchment paper
Kitchen twine
Sharp, pointed knife
Bench scraper

Instructions

1. Combine the water, starter, and cuttlefish ink in a mixing bowl and gently mix the liquids together, dissolving the cuttlefish ink into the water.

2. Add the white flour, whole wheat flour, and salt to another mixing bowl and sift the ingredients together with your fingers.

3. Add the blackened water mixture to the flour blend, bit by bit, and fold it together until a firm mass of dough is formed. Work toward kneading all the ingredients together so there is no white streaking in the dough. This step can be done with a mixer, if preferred.

4. Cover and set the dough aside to rest for two hours.

5. After two hours, tip the dough onto a clean surface and knead the dough by hand for 5 to 10 minutes. Important: Do not dust your work surface or your hands with flour when kneading; use a bit of water on your hands to prevent the dough from sticking. To keep the dough as black as possible, flour on the work surface must be avoided. Don’t be alarmed if some of the cuttlefish ink is visible on your hands or the work surface; the ink washes off easily. It won’t leave behind any dark residue on teeth or plates once baked but do take caution with light-colored clothing when working with it. After kneading, let the dough rest again in the mixing bowl for another two hours.

6. After the dough has rested, divide it into three even pieces. Use a scale if necessary. Form each piece of dough into a ball, tucking seams underneath. Place the balls of dough on a clean work surface and cover them with a damp tea towel until they double in size.

7. Once the three circular sections of dough have risen, preheat your oven to 375° F / 190° C / Gas Mark 5.

8. Cut four pieces of kitchen twine to approximately 15 inches (38 centimeters) in length.

9. Tie a “belt” around each loaf using one piece of cord.

10. With the fourth piece of twine, coil the ends around your index fingers on each hand (as you would a length of dental floss) and use this twine to impress four lines on the upper surface of the loaf. This move creates the superficial segmentation of the loaf. Note: As flour cannot be used to prevent the cord from sticking, you can run some oil on the cord prior to use.

11. Finally, at the intersection of the lines, use a sharp knife to puncture a slit through to the bottom of each loaf, which will allow for steam venting and thorough baking once in the oven.

12. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper and use a bench scraper to gently move each loaf from the work surface onto the baking sheet.

13. Bake the loaves for 35 to 40 minutes until they begin to take on a carbonized, charcoal-gray hue. Let the loaves cool prior to serving.

Pisa in Sepia

Peas in Cuttlefish Dressing, adapted from “Another Pea or Bean Recipe,” from the Apician collection De Re Coquinaria

Peas, beans, and lentils were common fare in ancient Rome, both at home and at local dining establishments known as popinae and cauponae, where hot food and drink were served to those who did not have cooking facilities of their own. Archaeobotanical remains of fava beans and chickpeas have been found at both Pompeii and Herculaneum. But Pliny the Elder informs us that chickling vetch peas were also grown and used, not just as cattle feed, but as a milled flour product to leaven breads and cakes as well.

Ingredients
2 ¾ cups of dried chickpeas or chickling vetch peas (yields 1,060 grams cooked)

For the sauce (yields ½ cup or 125 grams of sauce)
1 cup (200 grams) sweet wine (vino santo or passum will work well)
1 teaspoon (5 grams) hing (also known as asafoetida)
4 teaspoons (22 grams) fish sauce (garum)
1 tablespoon (20 grams) cuttlefish ink

Instructions

1. Soak your peas overnight. If you decide to use chickling vetch, as I did, soak the peas for 24 hours and pour off the water, adding fresh water three times during the soaking process.

2. After soaking, bring a pot of water to a boil and add the peas. Boil until tender. Check the peas at the 20-minute mark and forward. The peas should be tender, but not mushy. Once they’re done, strain and set them aside.

3. To make the dressing, begin by reducing the sweet wine to half its volume by bringing it to a boil and burning off the alcohol. Lower the heat.

4. Add the hing, fish sauce, and cuttlefish ink to the reduced wine and simmer for 5 minutes, stirring throughout.

5. Drizzle the sauce over the peas and gently toss the mixture until the peas are coated in the dressing. This dish may be served hot or cold in small, single-serving bowls.

Mugiles in Sepia

Roasted Mullet Glazed in Cuttlefish Sauce, adapted from “Sauce for Roasted Baby Tuna,” from De Re Coquinaria

Mullet were, and still are, a commonly consumed fish in the Mediterranean region. Pliny the Elder notes several varieties of mullet were popular and plentiful in ancient Rome—corroborated by a mosaic from Pompeii’s House of the Faun, which details several types of fish favored by ancient Romans, including a red mullet.

Ingredients
2 cleaned mullet fish

For the glaze

½ teaspoon (3 grams) black peppercorns
1 teaspoon (5 grams) dried lovage
1 teaspoon (5 grams) celery seed
1 teaspoon (5 grams) dried mint
4 pitted dates
1 tablespoon (15 grams) fish sauce (garum)
2 tablespoons (45 grams) honey
1 tablespoon (15 grams) red wine vinegar
1 tablespoon (15 grams) red wine
2 tablespoons (20 grams) olive oil
1 tablespoon (20 grams) cuttlefish ink

Equipment
Mortar and pestle (or food processor)
Fish kettle or roasting pan
Basting brush

Instructions

1. Use a mortar and pestle (or a food processor) to pulverize the black pepper, lovage, celery seed, dried mint, and pitted dates into a paste.

2. Combine the fish sauce, honey, red wine vinegar, red wine, olive oil, and cuttlefish ink. Whisk to blend it together.

3. Add the paste of dates, spices, and herbs into the cuttlefish ink mixture and blend. This should produce a thick glaze that isn’t too runny. If your glaze is too thick or chunky, add some oil to make the glaze smoother.

4. Preheat your oven to 400° F / 200° C / Gas Mark 6.

5. Place the mullets on their sides in a roasting pan or a fish kettle. Use a grate or trivet at the base of the pan if you can.

6. With a basting brush, paint the sides of the fish with the glaze. The glaze should apply easily without running and should not be too chunky. Try to avoid painting the eyes or the mouth of the fish but get as much of the surface covered as you can. If your first coat is thin, apply a second coat.

7. Cover and roast the mullets for 15 minutes, then uncover and roast for another 15 minutes. (Optional: If you prefer a crispy, blackened crust on the fish, raise the temperature to 450° F / 230° C / Gas Mark 8 with the uncovered pan in the oven for 5 minutes.)

8. Remove and gently lift the fish from the base of the pan and place them onto a serving platter with their heads at opposite ends of the platter.

Stuffed Dates

Adapted from “Dulcia Domestica,” from De Re Coquinaria

For the sweet course of this banquet, I selected Dulcia Domestica because black pepper is often used to dress the dates. Spices and aromatics were critical aspects of Roman funerary rites, and black pepper was one of the most imported spices from the Eastern regions. Spices such as fenugreek, coriander, and black pepper have been excavated from Pompeii, and De Re Coquinaria also records black pepper as an ingredient in the majority of its recipes.

Ingredients
12 or more pitted dates
12 unsalted almonds
½ cup (140 grams) honey
¼ cup (36 grams) cracked/ground long or black pepper
½ teaspoon (3 grams) coarse ground salt

Instructions

1. Combine the salt and cracked pepper in a bowl and sift it together.

2. Stuff each date with an almond.

3. In a small frying pan, heat the honey until it is runny. Sautee the stuffed dates in the honey until they are coated.

4. Remove the stewed dates from the honey and toss them in the mixture of salt and cracked pepper.

5. Serve warm or cold in a small dish or on a platter.

Ova Ambusta

“Carbonized” Eggs

The depiction of eggs as sacrificial offerings on Etruscan mortuary frescoes, Roman lararium shrines, and painted altars at Pompeii is a symbol thought to relate to life, afterlife, and rebirth, as highlighted by archaeologist Lisa Pieraccini. The presence of eggs on the Timgad stelae bases echo this same symbolic message: They offer the deceased the gift of renewal and rebirth upon their passing. The “carbonized” eggs for this recipe are being darkened using active charcoal. Add the egg to the table setting as a symbolic decoration. If you choose to eat it, you must rinse the blackened egg once it is peeled.

Ingredients
4 cups (240 milliliters) water
¼ cup (55 grams) active charcoal
2 or more raw eggs

Equipment
Fine sandpaper
Active charcoal

Instructions

1. In a small pot, add 4 cups (240 milliliters) of water and bring it to a boil, then reduce heat to medium.

2. Add ¼ cup (55 grams) of active charcoal to the water and stir until dissolved.

3. Submerge the eggs into the blackened water for 5 to 10 minutes until the shell of the egg is black.

4. If the charcoal doesn’t adhere to the shell, there may be a factory coating on the egg. The shell can be rendered porous by gently brushing the surface with sandpaper. Submerge the eggs in the water again once the surface has been treated.

5. Once blackened, remove the eggs and let them cool. (Note: Handling them during serving will leave black residue on the fingertips that washes off easily.)

Gastro Obscura covers the world’s most wondrous food and drink.
Sign up for our regular newsletter.