Cooking Lesson #734: Roman Meatballs with Pompeiian Tomato Sauce

Ancient Scrolls from Almost 2,000 Years Ago​

How you doin’? In my last book I talked about the importance to mankind of food and drink to culture.

“The Anthropology of Man Can Be Traced More Accurately Through the Foods & Beverages Of Time Rather Than Just The Richness Of Art, The Prose Of Literature, The Rhythm Of Music Or The Structure Of Architecture.”
 
Well, listen up… an ancient scroll from almost 2,000 years ago has finally been decoded. Quite the step up from the bits of hieroglyphics we ‘learned’ in high school Ancient Egypt classes, this task needed the help of artificial intelligence (AI) to be worked out.
 
The Herculaneum papyri are made up of about 1,800 scrolls and ended up buried in ash after Mount Vesuvius erupted in 79AD. These scrolls were excavated from an ancient Roman villa, but it’s been an absolute slog trying to unroll and read them. So, the Vesuvius Challenge was set up in March 2023 to try and decode them, offering a mega prize pot of $1million to crack the code. Papyrologists (yes, they’re a real thing) worked with the contest, believing the Roman scroll contains ‘never-before-seen text from antiquity’. Might it be politics, religion, pros, poetry or maybe something else?
 
Three students managed to read 15 columns in a scroll, helped out by AI-powered coding machines. Youssef Nader in Germany, Luke Farritor in the US, and Julian Schilliger in Switzerland will get to share the $700,000 prize money after managing to read over 2,000 letters.
 
Nat Friedman is one of the challenge’s organizers and TIME reports that after printing out the winning submission he said: “All this has been in this dreamlike digital world in my imagination before. Seeing it on paper, rolling it up, it just made it so tangible.”
 
This winning submission totals four passages, each of 140 characters. TIME explains: “With at least 85% of the characters in each of those passages recoverable by professional papyrologists. It also contains a further 11 columns of text.”
 
The text in question is a piece of Epicurean philosophy on the subject of cuisine pleasure… that’s right, Epicurean philosophy! The winning submission shows ancient Greek letters on a large patch of scroll, and the author seems to be discussing the question: are things that are scarce more pleasurable as a result?
 
The scrolls were excavated from an ancient Roman villa, Herculaneum.
The author, whose identity is unconfirmed, doesn’t think so: “As too in the case of food, we do not right away believe things that are scarce to be absolutely more pleasant than those which are abundant,” one passage from the scroll reads.

In the final section of the scroll, the author appears to criticize his intellectual adversaries, who 'have nothing to say about pleasure, either in general or in particular, when it is a question of definition'.
 
Professor Alice Roberts dubbed this discovery ‘the archaeological discovery of my lifetime’. Although, there is yet a whole load to be discovered with the combined efforts of the Vesuvius Challenge resulting in about five percent of one scroll being read. And the contest confirmed on X: "In 2024, our goal is to from reading a few passages of text to entire scrolls, and we're announcing a new $100,000 grand prize for the first team that is able to read at least 90% of all four scrolls that we have scanned."
 
So, what might they have discovered—a recipe for spiced, Roman-Style Meat Balls?
 
                         Roman Meatballs with Pompeiian Tomato Sauce
 
Prep time:  25 minutes
Cook time:  40 minutes
Total time:  1 hour 5 minutes

Ingredients 
For the meatballs
1/2-pound lean ground beef
1/2-pound ground pork
1 cup Italian seasoned breadcrumbs
1/2 cup Italian grated Parmesan cheese
2 tablespoons fresh chopped Italian parsley
4 cloves minced garlic
2 large eggs, lightly beaten
1 teaspoon kosher salt
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
olive oil (for browning the meatballs)

For the sauce
1/2 cup virgin olive oil
1 medium finely diced yellow onion
4 cloves garlic, whole
1-28-ounce can of San Marzano Italian-style tomatoes (imported from Italy)
1-28-ounce can of tomato purée
3 tablespoons freshly chopped Italian parsley
2 teaspoons dried thyme
kosher salt to own taste
fresh ground black pepper to own taste
 
Accompaniments
1-pound dried spaghetti
extra chopped parsley for serving
 
Fresh basil
 
added options
red pepper flakes for serving
grated Pecorino Romano

Directions
To make the meatballs

1. Preheat your oven to 250°.
2. Combine lean ground beef, ground pork, breadcrumbs, grated Parmesan cheese, parsley, four cloves minced garlic, eggs, salt and black pepper.
3. Form the meat into 2” balls and brown in olive oil until done, about 10 minutes. Set aside on paper towels to drain.
4. Place a serving platter in the pre-heated oven.

To make the sauce

1. In a frying pan, add the olive oil, onions and the four whole garlic cloves. Stir often over medium heat until onions are golden.
2. Remove garlic cloves and discard.
3. Drain the Italian-style canned tomatoes, reserving 1/4 cup of the liquid. Place the liquid from the canned Italian-style tomatoes and the tomato purée in the blender for about 10 seconds.
4. Add the cooked onions, drained tomatoes and blended tomato purée to a sauce pot; cook for about 10 minutes on medium heat.
5. Season the Marinara sauce with fresh parsley, dried thyme, kosher salt, and black pepper and stir the sauce well; simmer for about 20 minutes, stirring the sauce a few times.
6. Boil 1-pound of pasta according to the package directions for al dente cooked pasta.
7. Drain the pasta once done. Do not rinse the pasta.

 
To put it all together

1. Pull the heated serving platter out of the oven.
2. Pour the drained spaghetti onto the heated platter, top with the cooked meatballs and then cover with the sauce.
3. Sprinkle with 2 tablespoons chopped parsley and lots of grated Pecorino Romano cheese.

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Chefs Secret:  No need to add olive oil to the drained pasta… you’ll just end up with unnecessarily oily pasta.
Quip of the Day:  After a long day of conquering, Julius Caesar liked to unwind with a nice Roman-ade.
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