Cooking in ancient Rome: lentils with chestnuts

“Lenticulam de Castaneis“: This recipe from the cookbook by Apicius (ca. 25 BCE - 42 CE) is an exemplary showcase of ancient Roman cuisine, with its classical combination of the sweet, the sour and the salty. Lentils, like kinds of pulses, were an important staple for the population of the Roman Empire, and this vegetarian dish (you can substitute the fish sauce with soy sauce if you like) would have likely been eaten by all social classes. Chestnuts played an important role in the diet of mountainous regions until the 19th century and only later became a luxury food, due to the amount of labor involved in peeling them. I used fresh chestnuts from our garden and spend a happy hour or so peeling them, but you should be able to find peeled chestnuts (depending on where you live) either vacuumized, frozen or in brine. I soaked the lentils over night in water, cooking them for about half an hour. The extinct spice I am mentioning, “laser“ (no connection to the light rays), was obta