Name: Roman Bortsch
Cuisine: Italy
Ingredients: 500 ml water; 500 ml white wine; 4 medium-sized raw beetroot; 2 tbsp olive oil; 1 leg and thigh of a large chicken; 100 g honey; salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste

Preparation info

Difficulty
Easy

Appears in

Cooking Apicius

By Sally Grainger

Published 2006

About

This soup combines two separate recipes attributed to the agriculturalist and linguist Varro. As a remedy it could be drunk to aid the digestion, and it also served as a soup with the chicken included. I choose to leave the meat in, to give some texture to the soup. The dish is quite unusual in not using fish sauce. The sweet/savoury balance is surprisingly good.