Did The Romans Have A Recipe For Mice?

Question

Did The Romans Have A Recipe For Mice?

2 Answers

Answer Question

Answer 1

Yes, the Romans ate the Glis Glis also known as the edible dormouse. They farmed them.

Allow two dormice per person.
Each dormouse is stuffed with a forcemeat of pork and chopped dormouse, all pounded with pepper, nuts, fennel, broth. Put the dormouse thus stuffed in an earthen casserole, roast it in the oven, or boil it in the stock pot.

(I don't know if this would work for ordinary mice...and I don't want to.)

Answer 2

Want to cook the Ancient Roman delicacy of "dormice" or Glis glis?

Nothing could be simpler - except for the fact that dormice are tricky to come by.

So, for those of you without a local store selling dormice, here's a recipe that works just as well with chicken:

Ingredients

2 dormice per person (or two chicken breasts)
500g of "forcemeat" (a ground combination of pork, breadcrumbs and dormouse meat trimmings)
50g chopped nuts
olive oil
5 garlic cloves
Half a chicken stock cube dissolved in hot water

(spices, pepper and salt to taste)

Method

Slice open the dormouse and remove its intestines (you may want a pro butcher to help you out).
Use a pestle to crush the garlic and nuts
mix in with the forcemeat
rub in some olive oil
stuff the dormouse with the mixture
place in a casserole dish prepared with half a chicken stock cube disolved in water
boil in the broth for 30-40 minutes (another option would be to forget about the broth, wrap your mice in aluminium foil and stick it in the oven to bake.

When you're serving up the dormice, you can offer up this interesting fact to your fellow diners:

"The name dormouse has nothing to do with doors - it actually comes from the Latin word dormire, meaning to sleep".