Isicia Omentata (Roman Pork Patties)

Wine inside the patty

Book II of Apicius tells the cook to pound chopped meat with fine wheat bread crumb soaked in wine. Pepper, fish sauce, and optional myrtle berries season the mixture. Nuts and pepper go inside the little patties, which cook in their caul wrapping with caroenum, a reduced grape product. The Apicius article explores this sweet-and-savory pairing alongside the pear patina, whose fruit meets cumin and pepper.

The bread is worth noticing. It isn't a modern binder borrowed from meatloaf: the source puts it there, soaked in wine before the meat is pounded. In our mixture, soft bread crumb takes up the wine and is mashed before it joins the pork. Chopped nuts stay more distinct than the softened bread.

The source doesn't name the meat as pork or provide quantities. We use ground pork and pine nuts, mix the nuts through the meat, omit the optional myrtle, and finish with grape saba after cooking. Those choices give the old preparation a manageable skillet form. This particular passage doesn't ask for silphium or asafoetida.

Bacon and grape syrup

Thin bacon bends around the small ovals more readily than thick, stiff slices. Divide the weighed amount across all eight patties before cooking, cutting or overlapping strips where needed. The covering shouldn't dictate that one patty be twice the size of another just because a slice happens to be longer.

Plain grape saba brings concentrated fruit sweetness to the pan juices. Buy grape syrup, not a balsamic glaze: the latter would add a different sourness. Only a small finishing sauce is intended, enough to spoon over the patties without hiding them under a thick coating.

The syrup joins the pan after the pork is cooked, so its finishing stage doesn't need to compete with browning raw meat. The source cooks with the grape reduction; our sequence keeps the stove work easier to judge separately.

Eight small ovals

Two patties per person make four servings. Keeping them small leaves space for browning in batches and makes a modest portion easy to serve. Brown bacon on the outside doesn't establish that the ground pork at the center is ready; the thermometer check below does.

Bread can pick up the little sauce left on the plate, and greens offer another texture alongside the meat. Keep the sauce modest: the browned bacon and the nut-studded pork should still be recognizable beneath the grape finish.