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Comment by 4rtem | Hacker News Reader

I bought a torrone (Italian nougat dessert) in local Auchan (French supermarket chain) today and while briefly researching the dessert history found out that it was popular in Ancient Rome named as cupedia and in some Southern parts of Italy it still called as cupeta.

Just imagine to make recipe so good that it not just transferred across generations through 2000 years, but also evolved to come in supermarket in Russia.

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Only loosely related, but on the topic of deep historical namings: Mayonnaise comes from, and derives its name, from Mahon on Menorca in the Spanish Balearic islands. That in turn is named after Mago Barca, the brother of Hannibal Barca, "the" Hannibal who almost destroyed Rome. Mago was also a Carthaginian general, fighting alongside Hannibal.

So whenever you dip your french fries in mayo, you are celebrating the epic struggles of Carthage and Rome from two millenia ago. Bon appétit.

Allow me to recommend the AMAZING "Tasting History" YT channel, by Max Miller. He does history research into many different periods so he can cook the most authentic dishes, and has done a bunch of episodes on Greek and Roman culture.

If you feel daring, there's a group of people publishing ancient roman recipes up to Renaissance ones (and a bit later as well) in italian and English https://historicalitaliancooking.home.blog/recipes/

Pissaladière (classic dish from southeastern France) is sometimes said to come from old garum-like recipes (the Roman functional equivalent to Asian soy sauces).

There was a Roman recipe of what we call now burger.

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