Postulating About Posca
Posca: a drink I personally had never heard of, until seeing a postcard of Roman drinks in the Vindolanda gift shop. It is also not mentioned in the OCD (2nd edition) or even in my Latin dictionaries.
However, as a quick search on the internet will reveal, it was a very commonplace drink, but one that seems to slip under the radar — surprising, given the ‘vinegar’ offered to Jesus on the cross was most likely this.
The Scriptores Historiae Augustae (SHA) says of Hadrian: cibis etiam castrensibus in propatulo libenter utens, hoc est larido caseo et posca, exemplo Scipionis Aemiliani et Metelli et auctoris sui Traiani — ‘he was even freely eating camp-food — this is bacon, cheese and posca — out in the open, in the example of Scipio Aemilianus and Metellus and his father Trajan’. Scipio Aemilianus and Hadrian were a few centuries apart, so the drinking of posca as a way to sustain the Roman Legions was a well-entrenched custom. Given how this would likely be cheap and act as a water-purifier it is a believable and pragmatic one too. In fact, vinegar was frequently part of the standard ration — both showing this usefulness, and how little faith they put in contemporary wine preservation.
In his Life of Vitellius, Suetonius’ says that Vitellius’ escaped slave Asiaticus was caught Puteolis poscam uendentem — which Graves gives as ‘selling cheap drinks at Puteoli’, rather than footnoting posca. On the other hand, this does highlight that it was a common person and soldier’s drink, which might explain why it is mentioned in so little detail in surviving texts.
But it is not my intention to talk about all the information we have about this drink — the websites linked at the bottom do that with more competence and expertise than I ever could.
No. I am going to try and recreate some ‘for science/ Classics/ the alleviation of boredom!’. There is little detail about the recipe for posca (except for a full Eastern Roman medicinal one designed to act as a laxative, which I will not be recreating). I shall also begin by saying I am by no means a good cook, with merely the ability to create edible meals without getting any known mineral deficiencies. Drinks, however, may be more in my area of experience.
Firstly, there is no dispute about two of the ingredients:
- An ex-wine, usually towards the vinegar end of the spectrum. Red wine vinegar it is then.
- Water.
In what ratio? Don’t know for certain, but we can safely guess far more water than vinegar. What else can we add?
- Honey. The Romans’ ever-present sweetener.
- Coriander seeds. Apparently an oft-used Roman giver of flavour.
In the (lengthily-named) book chapter ‘Mediterranean drinking habits in Roman Britain: celery-flavoured wine prepared in an Iron Age bronze strainer’, the authors mention their idea of Romans in Britain using celery to flavour some cheap wine (as you may have got from the title). Given cheap wine is the origin of posca’s vinegar (or may be a substitute for it), I feel it is not a stretch to use celery seeds here:
- Celery seeds.
Basic Posca
Simply mix 2 tablespoons (each being about 15 ml) of the red wine vinegar and 250 ml water (use river water only if you want the authentic experience and feel particularly confident about the drink’s purifying ability).
The resultant oddly-coloured but transparent liquid smells, unsurprisingly, of vinegar, and makes me question why I am doing this.
Several online recipes stated that, despite the smell, it is quite a pleasant drink. I disagree, and would rather not finish it but here we are. At least you get used to it, when it becomes somewhat refreshing.
Did I mention I am not a great fan of vinegar?
Fancy ‘We Didn’t Use Such Nice Ingredients When We Were Garrisoned in Britannia’ Posca
This time, I added a generous tablespoon of honey and half a tablespoon of coriander seeds. I poured boiling water on the honey first, then added the other ingredients once it had cooled. Honey was a seemingly omnipresent sweetener in Roman cuisine, and coriander a frequently-used spice, so this recipe represents a slightly less basic — but still commonplace — version.
Do not use ground coriander in lieu of seeds. Or this happens. Unsurprising when you think about it.
So after using actual coriander seeds (ground in a mortar and pestle enough to crack them open)…
After a few minutes of infusing the drink with the coriander seeds, sieve them out, leaving you with… a surprising improvement over the non-coriander and honey version. Still an unusual taste by modern standards, but I guess if you only have dubious quality (and tasting) water in some far-flung corner of the empire it’d be very appreciated. Also, the additional ingredients somewhat nullify the overbearing smell of the vinegar!
The Power of Celery
Similar to above, but add a third to a half teaspoon of celery seeds as well and strain these out (if you, like me, don’t have a strainer, it’s ok — most sink below the coriander seeds and will come out during the sieving, just do not leave too many in there for too long or it becomes very fierce).
The celery, if not left in too long (when it becomes far too strong), gives a great extra something to the drink, making this my favourite one yet. It could also be termed as ‘almost a decent drink’. Since celery seeds were used in this method in Roman Britain, this is a very plausible variety of posca. Whilst it takes a few minutes to prepare, it provides a healthy, warming and fairly tasty drink.
Dodgy Wine
It could be made with really poor/ off wine too (with the vinegar obviously being the end product of said wine). Indeed, this would be more appropriate for a modern version — nowadays, it is rare to plan for large quantities of wine to become vinegar during shipment, as in ancient times. So, the modern equivalent of ‘that cheap Gallic wine that is almost guaranteed to be vinegar when it reaches Agrippa’s army so we may as well treat it as such’ is…
Yes, everyone’s favourite ‘Fruity Red’! Simply add two teaspoons of this instead of red wine vinegar to any of the above recipes!
Posca-Inspired Beverage For the Modern Consumer
Making all of the above made me think, which produced this as an unfortunate consequence.
Have you ever thought student toga parties were too classy? Ever want to accept their true level of sophistication and downgrade that wine for a more appropriate drink? Then look no further.
- 2 teaspoons of honey
- 250 ml water
- 75 ml cheap wine
- 25 ml gin (in place of the coriander etc)
The result? A dubious tasting, and dubious quality, drink that is mostly drinkable — and an improvement on the bad wine it is based on. After all, that is the spirit of posca.
For all your posca-related needs:
http://pass-the-garum.blogspot.com/2013/09/posca.html
http://www.romanobritain.org/2-arl_food/arl_roman_recipes-posca.php
http://www.romae-vitam.com/roman-posca.html
Sources
Sauer, E. W., Robinson, M., Morgan, G., ‘Mediterranean drinking habits in Roman Britain: celery-flavoured wine prepared in an Iron Age bronze strainer’, in (ed.) N. Sekunda, Wonders Lost and Found: A Celebration of the Archaeological Work of Professor Michael Vickers (Archeopress, 2020).
SHA, De Vita Hadriani, https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A2008.01.0508:work=1 (Accessed 31/5/20).
Suetonius, The Twelve Caesars, trans. Robert Graves (Penguin, 1957).
Suetonius, The Twelve Caesars, http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.02.0132%3Alife%3Daug. (Accessed 31/5/20).
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