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Aliter Sala cattabia (Another Cattanian Salad)
Aliter Sala cattabia (Bread Salad) is a traditional Ancient Roman recipe for a salad of bread sprinkled in vinegar with cheese, mint and coriander in an olive oil and vinegar dressing. The full recipe is presented here and I hope you enjoy this classic Ancient Roman version of Aliter Sala cattabia.
prep time
10 minutes
cook time
20 minutes
Total Time:
30 minutes
Serves:
4
Rating: 
Tags : Herb RecipesBread RecipesCheese RecipesAncient Roman Recipes
Original Recipe
Aliter sala cattabia: panem Alexandrinum excavabis, in posca macerabis. adicies in mortarium piper, mel, mentam, alium, coriandrum, viridem, caseum bubulum sale conditum, aquam, oleum. insuper nivem et inferes.
Translation
Hollow out an Alexandrine loaf of bread, soak the crumbs with posca and make a paste of it. Put in the mortar pepper, honey, mint, garlic, fresh coriander, salted cow's cheese, water and oil. Wine poured over before serving.
Modern Redaction
Though not
truly a salad in terms of the modern definition of the word, this remains an useful accompaniment to most Roman dishes. In a world without potatoes, bread was a staple and any novel way of presenting it would have been an useful addition to the table. The original recipe calls for breadcrumbs, but this version with whole pieces of bread makes a welcome addition to the table.
Indeed, there are a handful of salad-like dishes in the ancient Roman cookbook Apicius'
De re Coquinaria that go by the name sala cattabia (or variant thereof, like this one). This name appears in several different forms — salacaccabia/salacattabia among them — and the name is thought to derive from the Greek ἁλακακκάβια (halakakkábia). The first element means “salt" — hals in Greek. The second element is the name for a type of cooking dish, which arrived to Latin as the word
caccabus.
Ingredients:
1 loaf of good quality
bread
100ml mild vinegar
100ml water
60g grated mild cheese (eg mozzarella)
3 garlic cloves
large pinch of
black peppercorns
small sprig of mint
large bunch of
coriander
30ml olive oil
50ml white wine vinegar
sea salt to taste
Method:
The original recipe uses the salad to stuff a loaf of bread. If you have a good quality cot-type loaf I would cut off the top then hollow out the loaf and once the salad is made stuff it back in the loaf. I didn't have that type of bread when I made the recipe, so I served in a bowl instead.
Remove the crusts from the bread and chop the remainder. Mix equal quantities of vinegar and water (about 100ml of each should suffice) and lightly moisten the bread with this. Arrange the bread by scattering in a bowl then cover by sprinkling the cheese over it.
Make the dressing by crushing the garlic and peppercorns in a pestle and mortar. Roughly chop the mint and coriander and add to the mortar. Grind it into the garlic and peppercorns to make a rough paste. At this stage adding a pinch of sea salt will aid with the maceration.
Add the olive oil and white wine vinegar to the crushed mixture, mixing well. Pour over the bread, chill and serve.
Find more recipes from Apicius' De Re Coquinaria, part of this site's Ancient Roman recipes collection.
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