Honey as an ingredient during Roman’s time

Most of 100 hundred million people who lived in Roman empire were peasants or worker in the land. They normally kept bees for honey and they had no sugar. They relied on honey for sweetening.

Romans did not drink pure wine but mixed it in varying proportions with water and flavored it with honey.

Normally a white wine sweetened with honey was served with the first course; for the main course there was wine mixed with water.

Their meals in rich households included shellfish, edible snails, roasted duck or chicken, birds were cooked in honey.

Even boiled eggs were to be eaten with a sauce compounded out of soaked pine-kernels, pepper, lovage, honey and vinegar with some of the inevitable liquamen or fish sauce.

Roman also gave milk and honey to a newborns to ward off sickness and evil spirits.

Honey was not only appreciated as a food, it was also the food of the gods.

The church welcome the milk and honey custom into worship since it could and re-imagine it as the fulfillment of God’s promise to their ancestor that he would lead them to a land flowing with milk and honey.

When the first bakers and confectioner opened their shops at Rome by 170 BC they soon sold all kind of honey-cakes which figured as dessert and sweets on the tables.
Honey as an ingredient during Roman’s time