3 day rations

[Chuck Russell]

can anyone please give me the modern equivalent of the roman 3 days rations? lil how much flower, oil and water that would be? looking to make a linen sack to hold the flower etc. i wanna get my pack kit correct

[Carlton Bach]

I don't think they would have used flour for marching rations. Roman troops received their regular rations in grain, and we know that unitsd had their own grain mills, so grinding it must have been a part of regular duties. I'd assume that troops on longer marches received grain, the same as on garrison duty, and ground it as required while troops on shorter operations would be better off carrying hardtack (buccelatum). So if you want something authentic to eat, think about hardtack, sausage or bacon, maybe hard cheese. It appears that was becoming the custom whenever possibly in the imperial era, anyway (SHA, Hadrian 19,2, Avidius, 5.3., Cod Theod. VII, 4.6.).

If you want to do cooking in camp, but can't lug around a stone mill (I fully understand :wink: ), think about carrying bulgur wheat. You can use it to make puls, it's easy to cook, doesn't take as long as whole wheatberries would, and looks wonderfully unfamiliar to modern audiences. In Roman times, of course, it wouldn't have been parboiled, but the number of people who can tell from looking is likely to be small)

As to amounts, we know relatively little. Papyri dating to late Antiquity speak of a daily ration of about 1 kg of bread (3 Roman pounds), 1 litre of wine, and 70 ml of oil, with a large portion of meat (2 Roman lbs, unlikely for earlier times). Based on the data in Polybius, Junkelmann comes up with about 900g-1kg of wheat per day. An additional advantage of hardtack is that the weight gets reduced, but the calories stay the same.

[Chuck Russell]

yes yes grain, why did i say flour. i cant cook so i dont know much of the difference heheh. thanks so much

[Mithras]

I do alot of marching, with authentic rations if possible. We take enough for 3 days, but only march for one. Usually we take fresh bread, some hard-tack, smoked sausage (salami or German sausage), smoked cheese, bacon and lard (if we can cook on the walk). If not we can take beef jerky, although one member of of Comitatus recently found a source of smoked bacon ready to eat, which tasted nice and sounded very authentic! A few nuts, apples, boiled eggs etc. round out the rations.

[Mithras]

I forgot to tell you about this PDF document I wrote last year on Marching Rations (on the Comitatus website): CLICK HERE

[Matthew Amt]

I agree with 2 to 3 pounds of grain per day, plus a pound or two of meat. That's pretty much what Roy Davies concludes in "Service in the Roman Army", as I recall. I've got a small bag of (mostly smashed) hardtack that's a good 7 or 8 years old. Really grosses out the kids when I eat it, for some reason. But it literally hasn't changed since the day I baked it, except for getting crushed.

Don't forget your veggies! Dried lentils or other beans, very easy to boil up.

Valete,

Matthew

[Carlton Bach]

Don't forget your veggies! Dried lentils or other beans, very easy to boil up.

The modern parboiled versions are. No doubt the Roman troops ate plenty of pulses, but not likely on the march. Dried lentils or dried fava beans (phaseolus spp. are new world) take hours to soften up.

Though I guess you could dry bean or letil mush and rehydrate it if you wanted to...

[Gaius Julius Quartus]

I was reading Tony Clunn's The Quest for the Lost Roman Legions (again), and saw on p.77 his summary of basic rations: bacon, buccelatum & sour wine. I got to thinking, and figuring, and this is what I came up with:

3 lbs grain ration per soldier per day x 80 men per century = 240 lbs.
240 lbs. x 6 centuries in a cohort = 1,440 lbs.
1,440 lbs. x 11 cohorts* in a legion = 15,840 lbs.

(*11 cohorts includes 10, plus the double in the first cohort)

15,840 lbs. of grain ration per legion per day!!
No wonder Caesar was always writing about the "corn supply"!


Someone please check my math - is this correct?

BTW, does anyone have a recipe for Buccelatum? And, what is the Latin word for "sour wine" (I believe the Greek is "ozous".) What wine and vinegar mixture would you use to make it??

[Carlton Bach]

BTW, does anyone have a recipe for Buccelatum? And, what is the Latin word for "sour wine" (I believe the Greek is "ozous".) What wine and vinegar mixture would you use to make it??

'sour wine' is a common translation for 'acetum' which, in other contexts, is also rendered as 'vinegar'. The military drink often also rendered as 'sour wine' in older translations is 'posca'. Which is which requires checking the source text, unfortunately, though more modern translators are often kind enough to leave 'posca' standing.

Since I don't drink alcohol, I usually make my posca with a few tablespoons of mild red wine vinegar to the litre of water.

As to the bucellatum recipe - how authentic do you need or want? What I usually do is:

1 cube (1.3 oz, roughly) active live yeast
500g whole wheat flour
1 tsp salt

if desired, fennelseeds, savory, or other herbs.

STir the yeast into a cup of warm water. Combine flour and salt in a bowl. Add the yeast and water and start workling the dough, adding warm water as needed (usually about another cup, or a little less) and knead, knead, knead (that is the point I thank the heavens for owning a KitchenAid). You can tell the dough is finished when a depression of the surface made with a finger slowly rises again when left alone). Cover and leave to rise in a warm place. Punch down when risen, transfer to a flat, round pan and leave to rise again until doubled (you can score the surface, but for making bucellatum it's not really necessary). Once doubled, place in an oven at 225°C. Reduce heat to 200°C after 10 minutes, then to 175°C after a further 20. The bread takes 30-50 minutes to bake.
Now remove it from oven and pan and let it cool. Then slice into about a finger's thickness and arrange these on a griddle in a single layer. Dry in the oven az 75°C until hard and brittle all though.

This version is quite pleasant and rather classy. If you feel more manly, just use plain flour-water-paste withoiut leavening and bake it at 175°C for the first go, then dry at 75°C. That stuff is genuinely unpleasant, but has excellent keeping qualities. Of course, for higher authenticity you should use sourdough cultures rather than yeast (yeast use as a leavening is assumed for Celtic, but not Roman, bakers) and stone-ground flour.

As a side note, travel 'biscuit' throughout the Med is shown in art as ring-shaped loaves big enough to carry over a stick. Sort of monsterbagels. I can't track this back to Roman days, but I wouldn't exclude the possibility that that's what their bucellatum looked like.

[Gaius Julius Quartus]

That is extremely helpful - I'll print it out and take it to the kitchen.
I knew "acetum" - just forgot! Thanks for the reminder.

Quartus

P.S. Has anyone every asked about "meles meles...FUNGUS!" ?

[Carlton Bach]

P.S. Has anyone every asked about "meles meles...FUNGUS!" ?

Yes, twice.

[Gaius Julius Quartus]

OK, I'll bite (this is a thread about what to eat, after all).

What does "meles, meles, meles...FUNGUS!" mean?

My Latin dictionary says:
fungor (fungi, functus) = to occupy oneself with (anything), to perform, to execute, to undergo.

fungus = a mushroom, fungus; a dull, stupid fellow

Please enlighten!!

[Carlton Bach]

OK, I'll bite (this is a thread about what to eat, after all).

What does "meles, meles, meles...FUNGUS!" mean?

My Latin dictionary says:
fungor (fungi, functus) = to occupy oneself with (anything), to perform, to execute, to undergo.

fungus = a mushroom, fungus; a dull, stupid fellow

Please enlighten!!

Geek joke

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Badger_badger_badger

The 'snake' bit didn't fit any more.

[Gaius Julius Quartus]

Now I get it.

I may have to order that CD, since our legion is based in the Badger state (Wisconsin, USA).

Theme music! :lol:

[Matthew Amt]

My bucellatum recipe is on the bottom of this page:

http://www.larp.com/legioxx/messgear.html

Chew carefully!

Matthew