Yumspo

Disclaimer: I know there are a lot of recipe adaptions out there, but for this one I chose not to read them and instead make my own interpretation of the recipe in the original poem. I am not a professional chef however so my choices may reflect that.

The Original "Recipe"

The original "recipe" for this spread came from the Appendix Vergiliana, a collection of c. 1st century CE poems attributed to Vergil but probably not actually authored by him. There is another recipe for moretum in Columella's De Rustica, with a slightly different way of going about things, however this post is focused primarily in the one found in the Appendix. Although not specified in this section, the context is that man is making this mixture as a spread to go on bread that is in the oven.

The (Relevant Part of the) Poem:

(Prose) Translation by H. Rushton Fairclough

At first, lightly digging up the ground with his fingers, he draws out four garlic bulbs with thick fibres, then plucks slender parsley leaves and unbending rue, and coriander, trembling on its scanty stalk.

These culled, he sits down by the pleasant fire, and loudly calls to the maid for a mortar. Then he strips the single heads of their rough membranes, and despoils them of the outermost skins, scattering about on the ground the parts rejected and casting them away. The bulb, saved with the leaves, he dips in water, and drops into the mortar’s hollow circle.

Thereon he sprinkles grains of salt, adds cheese hardened with consuming salt, and heaps on top the herbs he has collected; with his left hand he wedges the mortar between his shaggy thighs, while his right first crushes with a pestle the fragrant garlic, then grinds all evenly in a juicy mixture. Round and round goes his hand: little by little the ingredients lose their peculiar strength; the many colours blend into one, yet neither is this wholly green, for milk-white fragments still resist, nor is it a shining milky-white, being coloured by so many herbs.

The work goes on: and the pestle, no longer in uneven pace, as before, but heavier in weight, moves on in slower circles. He therefore pours on it some drops of olive oil, adding a little strong vinegar, then once more stirs up the dish and handles the mixture afresh. Finally he wipes two fingers round all the mortar, and into one ball packs the sundry pieces, so that, in reality as in name, there is fashioned a perfect moretum.

The Recipe As I Made It

So: in the original poem, there is a great deal of description of the process, but very little of the amounts used. Most of this is based on guesswork then, although I think it'd be pretty hard to get very wrong given the ingredients and that the dish doesn't need to be cooked.

Ingredients:

I have to confess that I halved these, because the original amount would not fit in my mortar and because it seemed like too much to eat. If you'd rather have it in the full amount, feel free to double this!

2 full heads of Garlic (~125g for me)

225g of some sort of Aged Goat Cheese or Sheep Cheese*

~10g of Fresh Parsley

~10g of Fresh Coriander

A few sprigs of Rue** or ~10g Rocket, Dandelion, or Chicory

A splash of Olive Oil

A splash of Vinegar***

Salt to taste

* The type of cheese is not specified, however goat & sheep cheese would have been most common in ancient Rome and we can infer from "cheese hardened with consuming salt" that it is not a fresh cheese. Age and type are up to you though

**Rue, at least where I'm located, couldn't be bought for ready money. The replacements are imperfect but as close to the original flavor as can be got.

*** I used Red Wine Vinegar on the logic that it would be closest to the sort of vinegar the Romans would have had access to. Other vinegars will probably work however.

My Process

All the ingredients! (except the oil, vinegar, & salt lol). As a mortar I'm using a molcajete, because that's what I had to hand and it seemed similar to Roman mortars I've seen, however most mortars should work I imagine.

I decided to crush the garlic a little before I added the cheese.

I chopped the cheese in to cubed to help to mix it in. This is also where I added the salt, although you can't see it in the photo.

The herbs! I think had I done this again I would have chopped them up before I mixed them in. As is they were whole leaves, although they were ground up a fair amount in the mixture by the end.

At first it was difficult to keep all the ingredients in the bounds of the molcajete, but as they mixed together it got easier and easier.

Once it was fairly smooth I added the olive oil and vinegar, and mashed them in.

In my case at least it looked really sticky at this stage and I seriously doubted it would form any sort of a ball, but it came together just fine, and in fact barely stuck to my hands at all. At this stage if you want it to be a little firmer you could put in in the refrigerator for a moment, but it's not really necessary.

Spread on bread and enjoy! Ideally this would be Roman bread, but any bread works :)

Final Thoughts