Fish with onions and bacon, oh my, what a treat! The recipe comes, you might have guessed it, from the Apicius recipe collection which originates in the 1st century CE, and bears the creative name “another fish dish“. The kind of fish is not specified in the recipe, so feel free to use whatever fish you like and which is available to you, even fish fillets of any kind.
You need: fish according to availability and preference, shallots or other onions (that’s indeed how it’s written in the original text), garum fish sauce (I use colatura di alici; you can use Thai or Vietnamese fish sauce), olive oil, bacon, vinegar and savory (or other herbs to your liking).
Stay tuned – there are more historical recipes to come on this culinary archaeology channel. In these little videos I focus on easy-to-reproduce recipes (“try this at home“). For a full culinary immersion visit me for one of my historical cooking workshops in Puglia, Italy: And if you like, visit my website at You can find more recipes in my cookbooks “GARUM: Recipes from the Past“, “From Eden to Jerusalem: Recipes from the Time of the Bible“, or “VEGETUS: Vegetarian Recipes from the Past“.