Scald the flamingo

During our recent vacation to England, Scotland, and Iceland, I visited the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford to see the "Last Supper in Pompeii" exhibit. Lots of interesting artifacts concerning food and eating habits of the Romans, with many things brought out from the ash. For example, they display a fresco that shows a wealthy man handing out bread to the poor, and they have a (carbonized) bread that had been baking in an oven when the volcano exploded (so it's burned but otherwise intact).

And they translated some Roman recipes. This one caught my eye:

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Almost all these herbs can be found today, or readily substituted (e.g., rosemary for rue). Good to know that parrot can be treated much the same as flamingo.

[Jenise]

Well isn't that helpful. Interesting to think of a time, actually, when what we think of as ornamental birds like flamingos and parrots were available in Italy as a food source.

Well isn't that helpful. Interesting to think of a time, actually, when what we think of as ornamental birds like flamingos and parrots were available in Italy as a food source.

Well, Colonel Sanders hadn't yet arrived on the scene. Those poor Romans and their date-filled sauces!

And a perfectly modern recipe as well. Nice.

Laserwort is also known as silphium and was a common, and much sought after, herb in ancient Rome that came from North Africa. There's some controversy over just what plant it came from, but it's believed to be from a plant in the fennel family that's now extinct.

I wonder if braised flamingo goes well with honey-dipped dormice?

-Paul W.

I think the dates pull the two dishes together:

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