Moretum is a type of herb cheese spread that the Ancient Romans ate with bread. A typical moretum was made of herbs, fresh cheese, salt, oil and some vinegar. Optionally, different kinds of nuts could be added. The contents were crushed together in a mortar

Mortar and pestle

A mortar and pestle is a tool used to crush, grind, and mix solid substances . The pestle is a heavy bat-shaped object, the end of which is used for crushing and grinding. The mortar is a bowl, typically made of hard wood, ceramic or stone...

, hence the name.

Recipes

A recipe can be found in the poem of the same name in the Appendix Vergiliana

Appendix Vergiliana

The Appendix Vergiliana is a collection of poems traditionally ascribed as juvenilia of Virgil, although it is likely that all the pieces are in fact spurious...

. De Re Rustica, book XII of Columella

Columella

Lucius Junius Moderatus Columella is the most important writer on agriculture of the Roman empire. Little is known of his life. He was probably born in Gades , possibly of Roman parents. After a career in the army , he took up farming...

 contains further recipes of moretum. The variant with pine nuts is very similar to modern pesto

Pesto

Pesto is a sauce originating in Genoa in the Liguria region of northern Italy , and traditionally consists of crushed garlic, basil and pine nuts blended with olive oil and Parmigiano Reggiano and Fiore Sardo...

.

External links

• Appendix Vergiliana in Latin
• Appendix Vergiliana in English translation

• Columella at The Latin Library
  The Latin Library
  The Latin Library is a website that collects public domain Latin texts. The texts have been drawn from different sources. Many were originally scanned and formatted from texts in the Public Domain. Others have been downloaded from various sites on the Internet . Most of the recent texts have been...
  
  
• Columella Books I‑IV in English translation at LacusCurtius
  LacusCurtius
  LacusCurtius is a website specializing in ancient Rome, currently hosted on a server at the University of Chicago. It went online on August 26, 1997; in January 2008 it had "2786 pages, 690 photos, 675 drawings & engravings, 118 plans, 66 maps." The site is the...