As promised this newsletter is focused on Saturnalia, or more truthfully uses it as an excuse for a few decadent cocktails and to discuss Roman drinking practices. It would be lovely for me to categorically state that Saturnalia was celebrated on the 17th with celebrations continuing till the 23rd, yet the complexity of Roman religion and converting dates from different calendars means that I will hedge my bets and say that it is likely that it was celebrated around then and you should treat all I say about it as a rough idea rather than any certainty.
Saturnalia is often mentioned around Christmas as the festival that Christmas borrowed heavily from, yet other than mention of it being a Roman festival, details of it are often overlooked. Now before I get into the details, let me summarise that it was a time of excess, inversion of normal rules, and generally an excuse for a party. So here is a drink that I feel fits:
Brandy Alexander:
25ml Brandy
20ml Creme de Cacao (ideally the dark stuff)
20ml Cream (single cream is most common, though I prefer the acidity of crème fraîche slackened with a dash of milk)
Shake with ice, strain into a coupe glass and dust with freshly grated nutmeg, or for a punchier twist a dusting of cayenne.
These are best drunk when brought to you unprompted by someone, and as they barely taste alcoholic they can quite quickly lead to a touch of sybaritic licence.
Now you have been sated with a drink, I will get into the details of Saturnalia. It was, as the name suggests, primarily a festival in honour of the god Saturn, and the major part of the day would have been focused on the public rituals held at the temple of Saturn in the Forum. Saturn was associated with the harvest and the mythical Golden Age in which everything was far better and so the festival was meant to give a taste of that, with decent food and more liberal social mores for the duration of the festival.
The reasons for such a festival and explanations for specific actions during the rituals and festival have been much debated, with some rather outlandish ideas of human sacrifice being posited as the origins for some of it. What is clear enough is that the festival, like all, changed over time. For instance, the end date of the 23rd seems to be a later addition to fit with the supposed birth of Sol Invictus. Yet, the basic idea of fun and some sense of a role reversal, with slaves being temporarily given privileges of freedmen and things such as drinking too much permitted or even encouraged.
However, none of this is really why you are reading for this is supposedly drink focused. And so I will focus more on the private festivities, as they included plenty of drinking. Part of the private festivities are rather similar to some Christmas activities with the giving of small gifts or figurines called sigillaria being rather like gift giving, in particular Secret Santa. I can almost imagine the giving of little gifts, while drinking with friends and Catullus being overly pleased with himself for thinking of some sexual joke to focus a present on.
Roman parties were often focused around the dinner table with parties called conviva, which were often rather like very boozy dinner parties. In normal times before the drinking would begin dice would be used to appoint an arbiter bibendi, who was responsible for deciding how drunk everyone would get. Romans very rarely drank their wine neat, as they felt wine not diluted with water was overly strong and a bit dangerous. As such the arbiter bibendi would decide what ratio should be followed.
This would have had far more power than a current host has, even if they set how alcoholic drinks are, as at a convivium libations were ritualistic given before each new cup of wine, and so everyone had to drink at set times. The number of libations tended to be at least three, with the first given to Jupiter, or perhaps just to the gods in general, and then to more specific gods depending on if it was a sacred day for any god. I can imagine than many heavier drinking sessions would have given high billing to Bacchus/Liber as god of wine.
Whilst this could get out of hand, it was still a reasonably limited power that the arbiter bibendi had. In contrast Saturnalia involved the appointment of a saturnalicius princeps, who had sweeping powers over the whole party. Unlike the arbiter bibendi — for which there is evidence they were appointed by rolling a wining set of numbers at dice — there is no clear evidence as to how the saturnalicius priceps was appointed. Tacitus does mention Nero being appointed after a game of chance, yet it is unclear if this means a similar game or just by drawing lots.
In a way, they are like a precursor to the Lord of Misrule, or King of Christmas, of early modern Christmas celebrations. I cannot be sure that they replaced the arbiter bibendi as there are not many sources, although I cannot see the point in appointing an arbiter bibendi who does not actually have control.
Some link the idea of the saturnalicius princeps to the idea of a Winter King (and some go as far as to suggest it originally involved sacrificing the king after their brief rule – but then again James Frazer did seem to have a thing for seeing human sacrifice in any old thing). But many see it as a way of poking fun of the emperor who would not take the title of king.
If you wish to do something similar — minus the sacrifice of course — for an arbiter bibendi I would suggest rolling dice and whoever rolls the highest wins, and for the saturnalicus princeps, either doing the same or inventing some other game of random chance. It might also be worth placing some ground rules first so things don’t get out of hand. N.B. the bit of Tacitus I mentioned ends in Nero having someone killed…
Oh and do note that this is just for convivium, and would not work for a Bacchanal — for that you will have to wait for me to focus a newsletter on Bacchus, in which I will try not to lead you into anything as involved as the Bacchanal in The Secret History.
Anyway, I feel it is time to get back to actual drinks (you can blame the long explanation of Saturnalia on me having read some Tacitus and feeling I couldn't leave details out after such effort) so will start with some Roman wine-based drinks.
You could say that the very way Romans drank wine was a mixed drink, and unlike the Greeks, they were happy to play around with how they diluted it. As well as simple water they used snow – so almost like a wine slushie… – and also hot water which must have been appreciated by any stationed in Britain during the winter.
They would also add spices and honey to wine. In part, this was done for flavour but also to show that they could afford it. In a similar way, there is a story of Cleopatra dissolving a pearl in a glass of wine, which first of all would need ages or some hideously acidic wine, and would not alter the flavour for good.
Their spiced wine was generally called conditum, and there is a recipe for conditum pardoxum (which could be rendered as something like “confusing spiced wine”) recorded by the Roman food writer Apicius. Here is my somewhat simplified version of it, which is aimed at using a bog-standard white wine and turning it into something a bit more umphy – I have gone for a bottle worth but it would scale reasonably well.
Conditum Paradoxum:
750ml White Wine
300g Honey
4 tsp Black Pepper (freshly cracked)
2 tsp Coriander Seeds (freshly cracked)
4 Bay Leaves
6 strands of Saffron
12 Dates (roughly chopped)
Bring 200ml of the wine to the boil, add the honey and reduce the heat to simmering, and stir until fully dissolved. Add in the spices and dates, simmer for a further 5 minutes then take off the heat and allow to cool, then strain out the solids and mix in the remaining wine.
Either serve at room temperature or gently warm. N.B. it is rather sweet and heavily spiced for modern tastes, and so is best served in small quantities.
For a more quaffable alternative I have lowered the sweetness and tempered the spice for this lightly spiced wine-based drink – the quantities are rather large but then this is designed for a party, although it could be scaled down.
Vinum Comissatione:
750ml Sweet Marsala (or similar sweet fortified wine)
50g Sugar
2 tsp Coriander Seeds (freshly cracked)
2 tsp Dried Thyme
Water
Mix the Marsala with the sugar and stir until dissolved, add the spices and infuse at room temperature for 30 minutes. Strain out the solids, and dilute with water as directed by the arbiter bibendi, or to taste. In a pinch white wine, with a dash of brandy and some honey can be used instead of Marsala.
The idea behind these two recipes might seem rather familiar and if served warm could be seen as mulled wine. It is debatable if mulled wine is linked historically to conditum, as there are other possibilities for its ancestors, yet the idea of taking wine, sweetening it and adding extra flavour is very common.
There is also a long tradition of drinks heated with a touch of spice, such as Mulled Ale (often heated with a hot poker), or Lambswool, which was made by adding roasted apples to cider to warm it and add sweetness. Really as long as you are not too heavy on domineering spices like cloves, it is rather hard to go wrong with adding spices to any sort of alcohol, heating it gently and sweetening to taste.
And to go with these warming spiced drinks here is the normal recipe I use for mince pies.
Question wise, I have been asked a few and some need a bit more detail than I can go into here and so will feature later as full newsletters. The one question I can easily answer here, and sort of links to the themes, is if glasses make a difference.
I do rather like to use specific glasses for the look of them and so feel that if you are doing drinks for say Saturnalia you should either use drinking vessels modelled on roman drinking cups or go for the idea of excess and use the fanciest glasses you have.
However, there are some reasons to use specific glasses, other than just the aesthetics. Most drinks in coupe or martini glasses benefit from being in a stemmed glass as they tend not to have any ice in them, but should be drunk cold. As you can hold the stem there is less heat transfer from your hands.
This is not an issue for drinks such as an Old Fashioned, as it is served with ice so heat transfer from your hands will not overly warm the drink. There is also a slight aspect of practicality here, you can easily make an Old Fashioned in a tumbler, whereas it would be rather fiddly and liable to break the glass if you used a coupe.
Another occasional consideration is for drinks with sparkling wine or soda water in them, is how quickly they will go flat. For champagne, there have been studies showing that a flute will keep champagne sparkling for far longer than a coupe glass, yet I feel these rather miss the point that if the drink is in the glass for more than 10 minutes it will have got too warm anyway. Better to go for small glasses that will look good with only a small measure of drink in them, and have multiple cocktails at their perfect temperature than use larger glasses.
Indeed that is why I do not often use my martini glasses as they could contain far more martini than I would want to drink quickly and an almost empty glass looks rather sad.
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