We served this sauce along side roast game hens at our Cena. Like our pork our game hens were also cooked simply. Each bird was rubbed with virgin olive oil and sprinkled with a generous helping of salt and pepper.  Pepper was the new hot thing in Roman cuisine and they used it in nearly everything often in large amounts even in sweets.

• Leaves off five stems of mint

• Heaping tsp of pepper

• One cup chicken stock

• 1/4 cup chopped parsley

• 8 threads of saffron

• 2 tsp (toasted) celery seed

• 2 tbsp honey

• 1/4 cup red wine vinegar

• 1/2 cup white wine

• 2/3 cup ground (toasted) hazelnuts*

simmer until thickened  Makes about 1-1/2 cups sauce

This will seem like it is not cooking down and you will be tempted to add more ground nuts. Be patient. It will cook down and will thicken suddenly just when you think it never will. In the original recipe the sauce was spread over the chicken near the end of the roasting time, (about the last fifteen minutes). We served it on the side to avoid issues with nut allergies.

The English Translation of this recipe comes from The Roman cookery of Apicius; A Treasury of Gourmet Recipes & Herbal Cookery, Translated and Adapted for the Modern Kitchen by John Edwards, Hartley & Marks, Ltd., Publishers, Vancouver, BC 1984  Mr. Edwards provides worked out recipes for nearly all of the recipes, but the above redaction is my own.

Aliter Ius In Avibus another sauce for birds

Mix pepper, parsley, lovage, dried mint and saffron.  Pour wine [over these ingredients] Add hazelnuts or roasted almonds, a little honey, wine, vinegar and stock.  Put this sauce into a warming pan and then add oil, simmer and stir with a sprig of green celery and Italian catmint.  Score [the skin of the bird] and then pour [the sauce over the flesh].

For more on our Roman Feast see Candlemas Cena

Other Roman Recipes

• Carrots Apician 
• Herbed Barley
• Melon Salad
• Minted Cucumber Salad
• Mushroom Patina
• Parsnips Apician
• Roman Sausages with spelt and pine nuts.
• Sauce a la Matius

Other Sauces for Meat

Sweet and Sour Sauce for Pork

* To toast nuts: Toasting nuts helps intensify the flavor. Using whole nuts, you may either toast them in a dry skillet, stirring until you can smell them and they are slightly browned or in the oven spread out in a single layer on a cookie sheet or baking pan at 350 for 8-10 minutes. After toasted, rub them briskly in a cloth to remove the skins. Don't use your best linen for this job because the nut skins will stain the cloth.