Conditum, piperatum, or konditon (κόνδιτον) is a family of

spice A spice is a seed, fruit, root, bark, or other plant substance primarily used for flavoring or coloring food. Spices are distinguished from herbs, which are the leaves, flowers, or stems of plants used for flavoring or as a garnish. Spices a ...

wine Wine is an alcoholic drink typically made from fermented grapes. Yeast consumes the sugar in the grapes and converts it to ethanol and carbon dioxide, releasing heat in the process. Different varieties of grapes and strains of yeasts are ...

s in

ancient Roman In modern historiography, ancient Rome refers to Roman civilisation from the founding of the city of Rome in the 8th century BC to the collapse of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century AD. It encompasses the Roman Kingdom (753–509 B ...

and

Byzantine The Byzantine Empire, also referred to as the Eastern Roman Empire or Byzantium, was the continuation of the Roman Empire primarily in its eastern provinces during Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, when its capital city was Constantin ...

cuisine. The

Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power ...

name translates roughly as "spiced". Recipes for ''conditum viatorium'' (traveler's spiced wine) and ''conditum paradoxum'' (surprise spiced wine) are found in '' De re coquinaria''. This ''conditum paradoxum'' includes wine,

honey Honey is a sweet and viscous substance made by several bees, the best-known of which are honey bees. Honey is made and stored to nourish bee colonies. Bees produce honey by gathering and then refining the sugary secretions of plants (primar ...

pepper Pepper or peppers may refer to: Food and spice * Piperaceae or the pepper family, a large family of flowering plant ** Black pepper * ''Capsicum'' or pepper, a genus of flowering plants in the nightshade family Solanaceae ** Bell pepper ** Chili ...

, mastic, laurel,

saffron Saffron () is a spice derived from the flower of ''Crocus sativus'', commonly known as the "saffron crocus". The vivid crimson stigma (botany), stigma and stigma (botany)#style, styles, called threads, are collected and dried for use mainly ...

, date seeds and dates soaked in wine. In the

Levant The Levant () is an approximation, approximate historical geography, historical geographical term referring to a large area in the Eastern Mediterranean region of Western Asia. In its narrowest sense, which is in use today in archaeology an ...

of the 4th-century CE, the main ingredients of ''conditum'' were wine, honey and pepper corns. Conditum was considered to be a piquant wine. A 10th-century redaction of an earlier Greek Byzantine agricultural work brings down the relative portions of each ingredient:

Let eight
scruples Conscience is a cognitive process that elicits emotion and rational associations based on an individual's moral philosophy or value system. Conscience stands in contrast to elicited emotion or thought due to associations based on immediate sens ...
of pepper ornswashed and dried and carefully pounded; one '' sextarius'' of Attic honey, and four or five ''sextarii'' of old white wine, be mixed., p
260
/ref>

References

Bibliography

* Andrew Dalby, ''Food in the Ancient World from A to Z'', 2003 {{Portal bar, Wine Ancient wine Historical drinks Roman cuisine Byzantine cuisine