Roman army medics and pecan pie

 

Recently I learned a new word: capsarius. All right, it’s not one likely to come up in casual conversation…unless one is talking about the Roman army. Maybe not then.

The legions had medical units (and wouldn’t that make an interesting TV series? Sort of a cross between M.A.S.H. and A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum) which set up about a quarter mile back from the front lines. But the capsarius, about one per eighty-eight legionaries, was in the thick of it, like a modern army medic.

Fun fact: the capsarius took his name from the leather satchel he carried, a capsa. And when he wasn’t stitching a wound, removing an arrow or sending an injured man back to the medical tents, he returned to fighting.

I gleaned all this from the ancient history issue of Historical Times, which also includes pieces on the fate of Cleopatra and Marc Anthony’s children, Hadrian’s Wall, and Bronze Age barrows, among others. It’s online, interactive, and each issue features a different period. You can find it at https://www.historicaltimes.org/.

Currently, I’m writing a piece on food at the time of the Civil War for an issue which will appear later this year. It’s not my usual period, but I’ve been interested in the history of food since I was a child. My research in far, far too many nineteenth century American cookbooks has turned up some astonishing things.

Did you know pecan pie is (relatively) modern? I couldn’t find it in a cookbook until 1910. The Karo® corn syrup that is an essential ingredient was first manufactured in 1902. Sadly, no one was eating pecan pie during the Civil War.  

What they might have eaten for breakfast as suggested in The Kentucky Housewife (1839) was “ham poddage”: eggs served on fried mashed potato cakes, with gravy. “Ham sandwicks” was another possibility: slices of ham seasoned with pepper, nutmeg and lemon, in flour batter, fried in lard, with a gravy of onions, parsley, pepper, flour and cream poured over the whole thing.

If you try either of those, please let me know how they turned out.