Parthian Chicken and a Cooking Experiment

I ran into Frances Bernstein's Classical Living: Reconnecting with the Rituals of Ancient Rome in the library growing up, one of those miscellaneous world religion books in the Dewey 200 stacks that provided my first adult introduction to the idea of ancient polytheism. At that point, my parents and I had already spent several years going to Neopagan circles hosted by a couple at our church, so the idea didn't seem that odd to me. (It was about two years before I ran into Sannion's Sanctuary, so I must have been between thirteen and fifteen.) The book isn't in print any longer, but I found an inexpensive used copy to keep because I remember wanting to make most of the recipes in it as a child.

Well, today I finally got my chance and made Parthian Chicken, which is based on an authentic Roman recipe. I do know how to cook, so I modified it slightly to include a pinch of thyme leaves, but the rest is according to the book:


1 chicken
1 ½ tsps ground black pepper
½ cup chopped parsley
pinch of caraway seeds
2 tsp salt
2 cloves [I added four] garlic
4 tbsp water

Now, the recipe calls for the non-chicken ingredients to be blended together, but I doubt that the Ancient Romans had blenders and I know that my father does not have one in his house, so I got creative and used his acceptably sharp knives to chop everything as finely as possible before mixing them together in a bowl. The chicken needs to be cut apart, which my father did for me because I don't know how to deal with whole birds, and the entire thing bakes in the oven at 450°F for an hour and twenty minutes.

This is what it looked like when done:


To accompany the dish, I cooked up some linguine. The linguine was served in a sauce composed of five garlic cloves (chopped), sliced black olives, and the remaining sprigs of parsley. For a fruit/vegetable side dish, I chose sliced apples because I thought they complemented the meal well.
Classical Living is a great book. I am by no means a Roman polytheist, but the recipes for food and offerings are fantastic if this one is any indication of the rest. The author, Frances Bernstein, has gone on at least one archaeological dig at Pompeii, and Ancient Rome is her field of study. Had the Greek pantheon not called to me so strongly, the influence of this book in my youth would have led me to Religio Romana. The book goes through the entire Roman year, depicting festivals and giving suggestions for prayers, libations, and festivals to “reconnect with the rituals of Ancient Rome.”

My Cooking Experiment, though, did not come from her book. My younger sister decided to bake a pumpkin pie, and she had batter left over that she wanted to throw out. I decided to add flour to it because I wanted to know what pumpkin pie batter bread would taste like. Now, this could have ended as a disaster, but it did not. In fact, the bread is quite good and would probably be even better with some butter. From the looks of my sister's pie, which has pieces of cooked egg on the top because she didn't mix it as thoroughly as she should have and has something against using an electric mixer, it may even have exceeded what the batter was intended for.

I offered the first hot pumpkin pie batter dinner roll to Demeter, and it's sitting in an offering bowl right now. Thank the Gods this experiment turned out well.