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Tyros eis Halmen (Pickled Cheese)

Tyros eis Halmen (Pickled Cheese) is a traditional Ancient Roman recipe for a dish of cheese pickled for 24 hours in white wine vinegar and honey. The full recipe is presented here and I hope you enjoy this classic Ancient Roman version of: Tyros eis Halmen.

prep time

20 minutes

cook time

15 minutes

Total Time:

35 minutes

Serves:

12

Rating:

Tags : Cheese RecipesAncient Roman Recipes

Original Recipe

Tyros eis Halmen (from Bassus' Geoponica)

Cassianus Bassus was a seventh century author who wrote the Geoponica (Country Matters) Bassus drew heavily on the work on another agricultural compiler, Vindonius Anatolius (4th century) and the ultimate sources of the Geoponica include Pliny, various lost Hellenistic and Roman-period Greek agriculture and veterinary authors, the Carthaginian agronomist Mago, and even works passing under the name of the Persian prophet Zoroaster. During the 10th century Bassus' Geoponica was included into another work (also called the Geoponica which was compiled for the Byzantine emperor of Constantinople, Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus. As a result there has been considerable confusion as to what Cassianus Basssus wrote and what he did not. The recipe given below is derived from Bassus' original work and not the later volume often mis-attributed to him.

Translation

About the making of cheese, from a recipe by Berutios. Many people make cheese, which at the outset some people called whey, but most farmers call the same thing junket. It is better made from the milk of a young goat. And parched salt curdles milk, as does fig juice and the young twigs of fig trees or their leaves and the fur that grows in the heads of artichokes that are unfit for eating and pepper and the gizzard of and domestic bird that has been laid up in some dung within the intestine as a sort of husk. Animals that have been pastured on Solanum nigrum (hound's berry) will produce rather good milk, but they will make far better milk after grazing on clover. The milk lasts for three days if the day before transporting you pour it into a pan, boil it and then transfer it from one pot to another, stirring it with giant fennel or a reed until it cools and then you sprinkle over it a little salt. Soft cheese keeps for longer if it is made up with thistle seed and a little warm water, or even added to warm honey. Cheese keeps after being washed in fresh water and dried in the sun, then put in an earthenware jar together with savory or thyme, each cheese separated from the other according to its strength, with the addition of sweet wine vinegar or a mixture of vinegar and honey, until the liquid rises above the cheese and herbs. Some people preserve the cheese by putting it in sea water. Cheese stays white after being put in salt; it stays firm and sharp hung over smoke. All cheese if dipped in pulses and especially chickpeas or peas seems to last longer. But if it is hard or bitter through age, you should mash it with bruised barley meal (that is, the bruised meal that comes from unparched barley) put the cheese in water and then remove whatever floats to the surface.

Modern Redaction

Ingredients:

200g Feta cheese
A handful of fresh thyme
200ml white wine vinegar
1 tbsp clear honey

Method:

Wash and dry the Feta cheese to remove excess salt then cut into 1cm cubes. Using a clean pickling jar place a layer of the cubed cheese in the bottom. Cover this with a layer of thyme and then a layer of cheese. Keep on adding alternating layers until the entire jar is filled.

Thoroughly mix the honey and vinegar and pour the mixture into the pickling jar until the final layer of cheese is covered. Seal the jar and leave to infuse for a day.