Cuisine of My Ancestors: Ancient Celts

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The assumed time span of the Celts on my family tree is roughly 600 to 450 BC up through 400s AD, with the Romans moving in around AD 43. That gave me two distinct cuisine choices for my Celtic meal: pre-Roman or Roman-influenced cuisine. This is significant for while Roman language and culture made little impact on the Celts, they adopted many of the new foods introduced to them. I researched both.

How do we even know what the pre-Roman Celts ate? I found several pretty interesting bits of information. 

• Scientists have analyzed finds at archaeological digs including scrapings from cooking pots, the plaque on skeletons’ teeth, and even analysis of their bones. The assumption has been that their early diet was rich in seafood. Turns out there is very little evidence of seafood in their diets. Their primary foodstuffs were dairy, peas, cabbage and oats.
• During his attempted invasions of Britain in 55-54 BC, Julius Caesar recorded his observations about Celtic agriculture and diet. He wrote that Celtic Britons domesticated cattle, sheep, and goats which provided meat and milk. To a lesser extent they ate pork. Caesar also noted that the Celts kept domesticated geese, chickens, and hares, and that they fermented apples to produce cider. 
• In his Geographica, Strabo (64/63 BC - AD 24) records that Celtic Britons cultivated millet, broad beans, wild spinach, herbs, and primitive parsnips, They also kept bees to produce honey.
• Evidence of cheesemaking in Britain goes back to 3800 BC.
• Evidence of cereal grain based breadmaking goes back to 3700 BC.
• According to Pliny the Elder (23 BC – AD 79), “When the grain of Gaul and Spain . . . is steeped to make beer, the foam that forms on the surface in the process is used for leavening a consequence of which those races have a lighter kind of bread than others.” In other words, barm. British food historian Dr. Caroline Gordon, believes they used both ale yeast and the natural yeasts of fermentation in their bread making.
• Fragments of burnt barley bread, hazelnut shells, and apple cores found in Oxfordshire, UK have been dated and found to be 5,500 years old.

Everything was in season, of course.

Cooking was done in pottery and metal pots. Metal cookware, such as cauldrons, were more expensive and therefore less common. Some excavated dwellings had bake ovens. Querns were common for grinding grain to meal and flour. The early Celts utilized fermentation. 

What foods did the Romans introduce?

And how did I plan my menu? Basically, I took Max Miller’s recipe and used ingredients I already had on hand, so I didn’t have to buy much. For example, I have walnuts in the pantry but not hazelnuts. And I had leeks left over from my Tudor meal. And I decided to substitute lentils for the wheat berries. So my time period is post Roman invasion. Also, I cut his recipe in half because it’s just two of us.

Menu

Celtic Lamb Stew

Ingredients

• 1/4 pound walnuts, chopped
• 1/4 C butter
• 1 pound meat, finely chopped (I used ground lamb)
• 1 & 1/2 cups greens, chopped (I used kale from the garden)
• 1/2 tbsp mustard seed, crushed
• 1 cup chopped leeks
• 1 cup lentils
• 1/2 tbsp salt
• 3 cups water

Melt half butter in pot and toast nuts. Add remaining butter, leeks and chives and cook for 5 minutes. Add meat and mustard seed. Brown meat. Stir in greens and lentils, stir till wilted. Add water. Simmer until lentils are tender, about 30 – 40 minutes.

A pre-Roman version could easily be made by substituting:

• hazelnuts for the walnuts
• wild onions or garlic for the leeks
• whole grain barley, millet, or peas for the lentils