Cauldron Dish (King's Ordinary)
Attila's Boiled Meat in a Wooden Bowl
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A piece of mutton or game long boiled in the cauldron, served plain in a wooden bowl, merely seasoned with salt and wild onion. Nothing else: this is the dish of a man who wants to show that power has no need of luxury.
Why this dish? The Roman ambassador Priscus, received at Attila's table in 449, recounts that while the guests ate refined dishes from silver plates, the king of the Huns himself only took meat from a wooden bowl. This deliberate sobriety is one of the most famous images of Attila.
Approach, stranger, and look well: your masters in Constantinople eat from silver and gold, but I eat from wood, like my horsemen. We throw the meat into the cauldron, wait until it boils to falling apart, set it in the bowl, add salt, nothing more. A king's belly fills like a shepherd's — it is the arm that must be stronger, not the plate. Eat, and remember who feeds you.
Ingredients
- •Shoulder of mutton or game meat — a good piece per guest (base)
- •Spring water — to cover (cooking)
- •Salt — a pinch (seasoning)
- •Wild onion or steppe garlic — a few heads (flavor)
How it was made : The Huns boiled meat in large cast bronze cauldrons, found by archaeologists from the Hungarian plain to Central Asia. Water cooking allowed many men to be fed with a single fire and yielded a nourishing broth.
Sources : Priscus of Panium, fragments from the account of the embassy to Attila (449)