Eats History

Did you know that chickens held a special sacred responsibility in Ancient Rome?
Before a major military engagement in ancient Rome, priests called pullarii would release sacred chickens and offer them grain. The logic was straightforward by Roman religious standards: if the chickens ate enthusiastically, the gods favored the battle, and you could proceed. If they refused to eat, the gods were signaling that the timing was wrong and a wise commander postponed.

This was not a fringe superstition practiced by a few eccentric priests, it was an official Roman military procedure, observed before battles across centuries of Roman warfare. The Roman state took the chickens seriously because the Romans understood that religious legitimacy and military confidence were inseparable. An army that believed the gods were with them fought differently from one that had doubts.

Publius Claudius Pulcher did not share this view. In 249 BC during the First Punic War against Carthage, his sacred chickens refused to eat before a planned naval engagement at the Battle of Drepana. Rather than postpone, he reportedly picked up the chickens and threw them overboard, telling his priests that if they would not eat they could at least drink. He launched the battle anyway. The Roman fleet lost 93 ships and approximately 20,000 men in one of the worst naval defeats in Roman history. Claudius was recalled to Rome, put on trial, and fined. Never disobey the chickens.

Whether you believe the gods were communicating through poultry or not, the story tells you something true about how Roman institutional culture worked. The religious procedure existed partly as a check on commanders acting impulsively. Ignoring it removed a layer of institutional caution that existed for good reason. Claudius did not lose because he offended the gods, he lost because he was overconfident and because the procedural systems designed to slow him down were the only thing standing between him and a catastrophic decision (which he made).

Cooking Ancient Rome is available now for Pre-Order (Linked Below)

www.penguinrandomhouse.com/.../cooking-ancient.../

3 hours ago |[YT] | 105

Eats History

The concept of the fast food restaurant is a lot older than you think.

They were called thermopolia in Ancient Rome, from the Greek meaning a place where something hot is sold. Stone counters built directly into the walls of Roman streets, with large circular holes cut into the surface where ceramic dolia jars sat embedded, keeping stews, wine, olives and seasoned pork warm over hot coals below. Customers stopped at the counter, pointed at what they wanted, and either ate standing up or took it with them. The menu was sometimes painted directly on the wall above the food. This was a permanent, professionally run fast food operation in the middle of a Roman city and it functioned, structurally, almost identically to a modern warming counter at a convenience store or a cafeteria.

In Pompeii alone, which was a moderately sized Roman city of approximately 11,000 people, archaeologists have found more than eighty thermopolia. That is roughly one for every seventy-five residents. When Vesuvius buried the city in 79 AD it preserved not just the buildings but in some cases the food itself. A thermopolium excavated in the Regio V district of Pompeii between 2019 and 2021 still had traces of duck, pig, goat, fish and snail in its dolia jars. The archaeologists found bones, residues and pigment analysis that told them what was on the menu the day the mountain came down. A Roman fast food counter, frozen in time with the lunch still in it.

The Romans who stopped at these counters were not the wealthy Romans of the dinner party scene. Most urban Romans lived in apartment blocks called insulae that had no kitchen space. Cooking fires in a city built almost entirely of wood were a genuine fire hazard and were heavily restricted. The thermopolium was where you ate because you had nowhere else to cook, which is the same logic behind every urban street food tradition in history from a New York hot dog cart to a Bangkok noodle stall.

Two thousand years and the format has not meaningfully changed. If you want to taste the actual recipes that could've been served hot in a thermopolia pot, pre-order Cooking Ancient Rome before it hits shelves; the link is here:

www.penguinrandomhouse.com/.../cooking-ancient.../

2 days ago |[YT] | 514

Eats History

After 2 years of research, writing, recipe testing, and photography, Cooking Ancient Rome is finally here (for preorder!).

60 authentic recipes (adapted for the modern kitchen) straight from Ancient Roman sources, following the Rise and Fall of one of history’s most impressive civilizations in four unique courses.

So happy to finally reveal the cover for this project, and it will be available at all major retailers on March 9th, 2027!

4 days ago |[YT] | 848

Eats History

Visited the Ancient Roman city of Italica today, right outside of Seville.

One of the empire's most important cities, it was the birthplace of the highly successful emperors Trajan and Hadrian. For my TV fans, this was also the shooting location of the dragon pit from Game of Thrones.

Did a bit of filming here today for a MASSIVE announcement for you all tomorrow.

Stay tuned.

-Donnie

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5 days ago |[YT] | 765

Eats History

Content will be a bit slower this week; I'm currently in Seville, Spain. While the city is fantastic in terms of food, history, and culture, my travel luck ran out today, and I woke up with itchy welts around 1am.

I examined the bed sheets, and sure enough (all traveler's worst nightmare)... bed bugs.

Safe to say I got no sleep last night, and debated burning all of my belongings (elected to throw my clothes in a high-heat dryer and disinfect and inspect the rest).
Finally settled into my new hotel this evening, paranoid that every little black speck is a potential blood-sucking demon.

Hopefully the regularly scheduled program gets back on track tomorrow...

-Donnie

eatshistory.com

1 week ago |[YT] | 1,002

Eats History

Gazpacho existed before the tomato. This is what it looked like.

Ajo blanco is the cold soup that most people have never heard of and that every food history channel is obligated to cover. It predates the tomato-based gazpacho most people know by several centuries, because tomatoes did not arrive in Spain from the Americas until the 16th century and did not find their way into widespread culinary use for quite some time after that.

Before the red version existed, Andalusian farmers were already drinking a cold white soup of bread, almonds, garlic, olive oil and sherry vinegar to survive the summer heat. The Romans contributed the bread, garlic and vinegar base from their soldier rations. The Moors brought the almonds when they transformed the agricultural landscape of southern Spain after 711 AD. Someone combined them into a cold soup and the result has been eaten in Málaga and Granada ever since.

The traditional garnish is halved green grapes, and this is not modern decoration. The sweet burst of cold grape against the rich, sharp almond base is the documented Málaga finish, the same combination that Moorish-era Andalusians understood was the correct way to serve it. The soup without the grapes is good. The soup with the grapes is something else entirely.

I rated it 8.7 out of 10. Full history going back to the Roman Iberian colonies and the complete recipe with the one technique most modern recipes skip that makes the biggest difference to the final texture are on the blog now.

eatshistory.com/ajo-blanco-recipe-the-ancient.../

2 weeks ago |[YT] | 773

Eats History

Scotland has two culinary novelties that turn heads and clog arteries: a deep-fried Mars bar and an entire deep-fried frozen pizza. Delicious? Horrifying? It's up for debate.

Last night I did the full Scottish chippy double: a deep-fried Mars bar AND a battered, deep-fried slice of pizza. After one bite, my arteries have filed a formal complaint. But I wanted to know where these things actually came from, so I did some digging.
The deep-fried Mars bar traces back to Stonehaven, a little harbor town just south of Aberdeen. As the local story goes, in the early 1990s a schoolboy dared his friend to eat a Mars bar in fish batter for lunch. The woman working the fryer thought it was hilarious, called her boss to ask how you'd even do that, and dropped it in. The boys loved it. That shop is now The Carron Fish Bar, and it still proudly calls itself the birthplace.

Here's the documented part: the first newspaper report came in August 1995, when an Aberdeen paper noticed teenagers snapping them up all summer. Days later a national tabloid ran with it, and the world lost its mind. Other chippies have disputed Stonehaven's claim, and Mars has never endorsed it. Fun twist: these days most of the Carron's Mars bars go to tourists, not locals. So, people like me.

The pizza crunch is honestly murkier. Nobody has documented who first battered a pizza. What we do know is that Italian immigrants ran many of Scotland's chip shops from the early 1900s, so pizza and a deep fryer sharing a counter was almost inevitable. Anthony Bourdain once said on camera that it was a horrible idea he'd happily eat if he was drunk enough, which feels like exactly the right endorsement.
My verdict? The Mars bar: 7/10. It turns into molten caramel lava inside a crispy shell, very reminiscent of an American state fair novelty. The pizza crunch: 4/10. It's actually better than it had any right to be, though I'll admit the pints may have been doing some of the judging.

Have you tried either one, and would you ever do it sober?

-Donnie

eatshistory.com

3 weeks ago |[YT] | 827

Eats History

A nice mix of adventure, medieval cooking, and some family heritage today in Scotland.

I took a day trip from Edinburgh to the town of Stirling, which has one of the best-preserved castles in all of Scotland, with a ton of history (and a medieval kitchen) to boot.

But on a more personal note, before this trip, my mom did some ancestry digging, and my grandpa's family traces its origins to here in Stirling and the nearby town of Falkirk. Due to poor working conditions and the promise of the New World, they hopped on a boat to the Michigan area in the early 20th century, and the rest is history!

Slowly, their children's children lost their accents (as well as their addiction to HP sauce) and became Americanized.

Everyone has their own belief about the afterlife, but I'd like to think somewhere beyond, a pub full of old Scots are raising a pint for one of their descendants visiting the ol' stomping grounds. (At least the thought of it paints a fun picture).

-Donnie

eatshistory.com

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1 month ago |[YT] | 1,877

Eats History

Recreate the classic doughboy mess-hall staple that fed frontline troops during the Great War.

Canned corned beef, diced potatoes, and a fried egg made for a hearty, comforting camp meal in the misery of the trenches.

Try it out: eatshistory.com/ww1-recipe-corn-willy-hash-eating-…

1 month ago |[YT] | 1,395

Eats History

This was my favorite dessert of my whole trip to Poland.

Full Recipe: eatshistory.com/kremowka-recipe-polands-papal.../

The kremówka, Poland's papal cream cake, is one of those foods whose story tells you everything about a country. Two layers of shattered puff pastry enclosing a cold, thick, impossibly smooth vanilla cream, dusted generously with powdered sugar until it looks like a small snowdrift. It began as an Austrian import, the Viennese Cremeschnitte brought south to Galicia during the Habsburg partition of Poland in the 19th century, adapted by Polish bakers who made it their own while the country they lived in temporarily ceased to exist.

In Wadowice in 1936 it found its most important address, a confectioner from Vienna named Karol Hagenhuber who set up shop on the corner of the market square and whose recipe, made with all natural ingredients and no alcohol regardless of what later legends claimed, became the thing the young Karol Wojtyła and his school friends saved up to buy.

When that young man returned to Wadowice as Pope in June 1999, an elderly man visibly moved by the sight of the square he had grown up in, he looked toward the corner where Hagenhuber's shop once stood and said the words that changed a regional pastry into a national institution. And there was a cake shop. After the matura we went for kremówkas. That we somehow survived all those kremówkas. The crowd laughed. The next morning headlines across Poland were running the story. Within days every bakery in the country had renamed their kremówka after the Pope and pilgrims were flooding into Wadowice to eat one in the square where he had stood. For millions of Poles navigating the economic and cultural uncertainties of the post-communist 1990s, an affordable slice of vanilla cream cake became a way of feeling connected to the man who represented the best of what Poland could be.

I spent a month in Kraków on the Eats History Project and had my first slice at Cukiernia Wadowice in the city. I now completely understand how someone eats eighteen in one sitting. Back at the Airbnb I made the home cook version with pre-bought puff pastry and vanilla pudding powder, the shortcut that Polish babcias quietly use while professional bakers pretend not to notice. It was a 9.1 out of 10. If you ever get to Poland, get the real thing. If you want to make something extraordinary at home tonight, make this.

Full history and the complete recipe on the blog now.

1 month ago |[YT] | 1,496