During the time of the Roman Empire, cooks wanted to have on hand the yellow-flowered silphium plant, which was the most expensive spice, but was also considered a good cure for everything. After being overharvested, the yellow-flowered plant disappeared completely after AD 50, but there are naturalists who believe that silphium has survived to this day.

Why was she so sought after? How was it used and what substitute was found by the Romans and used today by millions of people in India?

Silphium is a spice that the Romans would pay for

Silphium (or silphion) was a spice from North Africa, highly valued in the cuisine of the Romans, as well as the Greeks. Because it was overexploited, it disappeared after the middle of the 1st century AD.

Veronica Grimm writes about this in the book “The History of Taste” edited by Paul Friedman.

“Silphium was a caraway-like plant that grew in North Africa. Almost all parts of the plant – stem resin, dried and crushed root and leaves – were used for seasoning. The plant was in great demand, and the region of Cyrenaica in North Africa, where it was cultivated, became wealthy from its exploitation, as the coins of the city of Cyrene proudly bear witness to.

It is said that the nobles of the region of Chernaika (modern Libya) forced the Bedouins to collect the plant, which was sold for a lot of money, in various forms. The problem was that the plant was growing in a small area, about 200 x 40 km, in an area where, although we are talking about northern Africa, there was a lot of moisture.

• Romans, food and empire – from expensive wine, bread and olive oil to flamingos, rodents and garum

In 638 BC, a chronicler wrote that he discovered the sylph “after black rain fell from the sky.” The Greeks used the plant extensively medicinally, believing it to be useful for everything from headaches to increasing fertility.

This North African plant was not amenable to cultivation, although the demand was very high and many attempts were made. “Its highly sought-after flavor and perhaps rumors of its contraceptive properties caused it to be over-collected and by the end of the 1st century AD it had disappeared. It is said that Emperor Nero received the last Cyrene copy as a gift,” explains Veronica Grimm.

Asafetida powder (source – Jochenschneider, Dreamstime.com)

The region of Cyrenaica was ruled by the Greeks, and from 96 BC it was annexed by the Romans. If the Greeks used the plant more tactfully, taking a little of it to preserve it for many years, the Romans adored this spice, and it is said that Julius Caesar would have kept hundreds of kilograms of this plant in the state treasury. along with gold reserves.

Well, from that point on, Roman cooks had to settle for an inferior substitute from the region of Parthia, and it was a derivative of the Asian cumin family that is still used in Indian cuisine today. Asafetida (or Asafoetida) is the name of this substitute, and it is said to have an aroma similar to that of garlic, but without the breath that retains the pungent smell.

The most famous cookbook that survives from the Roman period, the book of Apicius, has many recipes that also feature sylphium. In his recipes, Apicius makes a clear distinction between silphium and its cheaper and obviously less tasty substitute.

The silphium plant was present in recipes as pure resin (obtained from the stem), resin mixed with flour, or through its roots, which were ground and mixed with other spices.

The juice was dried and sold by street vendors, sometimes at huge prices, often selling something else, probably a much cheaper plant powder.

Back in the days when the spice was still available in abundance, it was used in everything from simple porridge to fussy roast flamingos. A lot of the food didn’t taste great, and the sylph was said to make a big difference. The roots were sometimes eaten after pickling, and the meat of sheep fed on this plant was very good. In those days, when silphium became more and more rare, plantations were surrounded by fences so that sheep could no longer get there. You can read a great article about sylphs here.

The disappearance of this plant is cited by some experts as the first example in the history of mankind, when the recklessness with which people depleted the resources of a species led to its complete disappearance.

Do sylphs exist today?

National Geographic recently published an extensive article about a professor in Istanbul who claims to have discovered yellow-flowered plants in the Cappadocia region that may be similar to those the Romans were looking for.

Ferula drudeana is the name of the plant, and it would have a lot in common with the silphium of the Romans, if we are to believe the descriptions of authors over two thousand years ago.

Mahmut Miski is the name of the professor who put forward this theory: more than two millennia ago, a trader brought a plant from northern Africa to the center of modern Turkey and tried to plant it. Since the plant can take up to ten years to reach maturity, those who planted it may have forgotten about it or thought the experiment had failed, when it didn’t.

According to this theory, if the plant took root, it may have survived in the area to this day because the people there did not use it for anything, so they did not interfere with its evolution in any way.

There are several “candidate” plants, one of which may be a descendant of Silphium, but we don’t know what the original plant tasted like. Even if we did find it, it might not taste as good to us as it did to the Romans two millennia ago. Tastes have changed a lot.

Romanians and their cuisine

Roman cuisine was not like modern Italian cuisine, and many vegetables did not exist because they were imported from the New World, more than a millennium after the fall of a great empire that at its peak had more than 50 million inhabitants. taste, if seen through the eyes of modern people: for example, the Romans used wort to make bread and consumed industrial quantities of a fermented fish sauce called garum.

Garum is one of those foods that we wouldn’t eat today, but was extremely popular two millennia ago – it’s a fermented fish sauce that the Romans used to season many dishes.

Fish such as tuna, mackerel, sardines or anchovies were most often fermented, guts used, and smaller whole fish along with aromatic herbs and salt. Everything was left to decompose for a month, and then the valuable liquid was filtered.

The smell was definitely disgusting, but the taste probably wasn’t that bad and probably resembled some of today’s Thai, Cambodian or Vietnamese sauces.

Romanians did not have tomatoes, potatoes, peppers, eggplants, oranges, pizza, spaghetti or pasta, but they were big “lovers” of fish, olives and wine. The Romans did not know oranges, which reached Europe only in the 15th century, brought by Portuguese or Genoese merchants, but they knew lemons, which were very expensive and came via Persia – Syria – Jordan – Cyprus.

Since it was a huge empire, food was brought to Rome from all parts of the empire: wheat from Africa, spices from India, sausages from Gaul, wine from Greece or meat from Spain. Since there were no refrigerators, some products arrived already spoiled, while others were preserved with salt.

Asafetida – sharp smell, attractive spice

Asafoetida, a substitute for Silphium, exists today and is very popular in India as a favorite spice, although it has a strong, pungent smell.

Although India consumes a lot of this spice, asafoetida does not grow in this country, the first experiment in this regard was carried out only two years ago, after many laboratory studies. You can read a great article about asafoetida here.

It, like Silphium lateus, is a wild plant that cannot really be “domesticated”, so it is imported from Afghanistan, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, with imports exceeding $100 million a year.

Why can’t it be grown in India? As this flowering perennial does well in arid soils and temperatures below 35C, but India has many tropical areas where temperatures reach 45C and areas with heavy monsoon rains.

The Persians apparently loved the spice more than 2,000 years ago, and raw whitish resin collected from the roots is mixed with wheat in northern India and with rice in the south to become an edible spice.

Asafoetida is also popular because many Hindus and Jains do not eat onions and garlic, so this herb, called hing in India, is a very suitable and popular substitute.

Photo source: Dreamstime.com