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The Romans brought new varieties of food to England. These included cherries, mulberries, celery, marrow, cucumbers, radishes, olives, figs, dates and walnuts. The Romans also ate chicken and dormouse and hare. As far as we know there were few rabbits in England in those days. They loved sea food and it would have been easy to find oysters and other shell fish around the shores of England. Colchester, which if you remember was at one time the capital of Roman Britain, was famous for its oysters and there are stories that the Romans so liked the oysters from Colchester that they would tow them in nets behind their boats all the way back to Rome. They also ate snails. They would eat using bowls but rarely knives and forks; they used their fingers. They liked spicy flavours and had a special sauce made from fish guts to make their food taste better. In which case I hate to think how it tasted first. The ordinary person would eat 3 meals a day. Breakfast, ientaculum in Latin, was fruit and bread, lunch, known as prandium, would be cold meat, vegetables and bread (seems a good idea to be a baker) while the main meal, called cena, was eaten about 4pm and would be hot meat, chicken or fish and again they would have vegetables. Much of the food would be bought in the market daily. The Romans did try to grow grapes to make wine but most of the wine they drank was imported from Italy. British peasants would drink beer.
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