Conditum

Conditum, piperatum, or konditon (κόνδιτον) is a family of spiced wines in ancient Roman and Byzantine cuisine.

The Latin 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, pepper, mastic, laurel, saffron, date seeds and dates soaked in wine.^[1]

In the Levant of the 4th-century CE, the main ingredients of conditum were wine, honey and pepper corns.^[2] 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 of pepper [corns] washed and dried and carefully pounded; one sextarius of Attic honey, and four or five sextarii of old white wine, be mixed.^[3]

References

^ Conditum Paradoxum Archived 2018-03-08 at the Wayback Machine – recipe in Latin and German, read on February 03, 2012
^ Buber, Salomon (1949). Pesikta de-Rav Kahana. New York: Mekitze Nirdamim. p. 102b (Baḥodesh ha-shelishi)., cf. Jerusalem Talmud (Terumot 8:3 [42a], Solomon Sirilio's commentary there, s.v. קונדיטון) and Jerusalem Talmud (Avodah Zarah 2:3 [11b]
^ Geoponika - Agricultural Pursuits. Vol. 1. Translated by Owen, T. London: University of Oxford. 1805., p. 260