The table of old times,
The Book of Recipes

Pear patina

Period: Roman Empire / Category: dessert

Marcus Gavius ​​Apicius (c. 25 BC – c. 37 AD),

The Culinary Art , Book IV: Various dishes (162)

Ingredients

for 6 persons :

  • 4 nice, fairly large and fragrant pears
  • 100 grams of thyme honey (or other aromatic honey)
  • 10 cl of straw wine
  • 5 cl of olive oil
  • 3 large eggs
  • 1 tablespoon of Garum (Nuoc-Mâm fish sauce)
  • 1 teaspoon freshly ground pepper
  • 1 teaspoon of ground cumin

The preparation

1- Peel the pears, cut them in half, scoop out the insides and cut each half into quarters.
2- Heat the honey (over very low heat) in a saucepan.
When the honey is hot and begins to foam, deglaze with the straw wine. 3- Add the pears, garum, olive oil and ground pepper.
4- Bring to the boil and cook covered for 20 minutes.
Remove from fire. 5- Grind the pears.
6- Break and beat the eggs and then add this mixture, little by little, to the crushed pears while stirring.
7- Mix until the patina is homogeneous.
8- Pour the preparation into 6 ramekins.
9- Place the ramekins in a high-sided dish containing water and cook in a bain-marie for 1 hour 30 minutes at 120°C.

Annotations

  • The term 'patina' refers to a common recipe in ancient Roman cuisine, in the form of a flan or omelette. This recipe for pear patina is taken from the fourth volume of The Culinary Art (De Re Coquinaria) by Apicius. This volume contains an impressive collection of 37 patinae, each characterized by a remarkable diversity of ingredients, both in their nature and in their flavors. Among these recipes, some celebrate vegetables, others put fruits in the spotlight (as in this case) while still others highlight various meats and offal, fish and shellfish dishes, or even creations floral, as evidenced by the patina of roses.
  • The fruit patina recipes are very simple, you can either cut the fruit into pieces, or, like me, grind them to have a smoother texture in the mouth.