At first glance it certainly does look like a pizza. The well-risen and golden crust, sunken centre blushed pink and white, a bright green leaf across the top. Looking at the roughly 2,000-year-old fresco that emerged during excavations at Pompeii, the colours leap out: the silver tray and wine goblet, the yellow orbs and rubble of nuts.
Gabriel Zuchtriegel, the director of Pompeii, this week announced the latest find in the city buried by ash after the eruption of Vesuvius in AD79: not exactly a pizza, but possibly related. He explained that the fresco was a common one in ancient Pompeii, that the food depicted was focaccia, fruit and a goblet of wine, collectively known as xenia, hospitable offerings to guests – a Greek tradition adopted by the Romans, the ancient equivalent of tea, biscuits and giving visitors the comfy part of the sofa.
So the flashes of red and pink were in fact fruit, pomegranate and fresh dates, while the curious white and yellow could be explained as an ancient pesto of herbs and sheep’s cheese known as moretum. The rubble in front was most likely walnuts, and the curious bright yellow fruit with prickles was corbezzoli, or berries from the arbutus or strawberry tree, which also come in red and orange. The goblet, of course, was full of red wine. My kind of hospitable offering.
I read this while in the eastern Italian region of Le Marche learning about grains with Laura Lazzaroni and the visionary wheat man Prof Salvatore Ceccarelli. Einkorn and emmer are the earliest varieties of wheat known to man, nourishment of ancient Rome and progenitor of every grain we eat.
I asked the professor how I could recreate this ancient “pizza” as faithfully as possible. “Einkorn,” was his reply. “Stoneground. And read Columella.”
I returned home with a bag of appropriately milled flour and a friend who bakes, and we set about recreating the focaccia.
We didn’t have sourdough starter, sadly, as the Romans would have had. They were also keen on yeast developed from grapes, though we didn’t have any of those either. We found a solution in Francesco Maria Amato’s book on cooking in ancient Rome, and a first-century recipe called artelaganus, which we turned into 300g flour, six tbsp sparkling wine, six tbsp milk, three tbsp olive oil.
It made a good-smelling dough, the colour of toffee. We rested it for three hours. Given that it was the hottest day of the year, I hoped it would miraculously rise, but it didn’t. Undefeated, my friend shaped it into a fat cake and pressed down the middle in order to create a raised edge. Having no wood oven or baking stone, we baked it in a round terracotta pot on the floor of my gas oven, set as hot as it could go, 260C maybe. The smell was like distant toffee apples.
As for the pesto, we took the professor’s advice and phoned a friend who consulted Columella, a prolific first-century writer on agriculture, incorporating recipes, including several for moretum, with combinations of sheep’s cheese, parsley, mint and spring onion, pepper, vinegar, oil, sesame seeds, pine nuts, hazelnuts, almond, honey, coriander seeds, anchovy and celery. I pounded 100g of cheese with a tbsp of pine nuts, a small handful of parsley and mint, garlic and enough oil to keep it soft – like pesto mixed with cacio e pepe and extremely good.
On the fresco, the white and yellow flecks thought to be condiment are maybe the most baffling. So I improvised and made a base layer of dates (some squashed) and pomegranates (some broken), juniper berries and black pepper.
While we finished making the pizza, my partner sat at the table reading, occasionally out loud. The focaccia sacrificale, he noted, was first and foremost a plate, mensa, to hold the offering of fruit, which certainly made sense for our sturdy dough. When we finally cut into it, its texture was like a biscuit crossed with dense bread and crackers. But because the flour was wonderful, so was the taste, and it was great with soft cheese, dates and spice.
A fresco focaccia! A hospitable offering. I will make it again.
