I saw on a documentary recently that the Romans had a kind of fast-food that involved seasoned ground meat, cooked on a hot surface then wrapped in a pita bread. Sold from a little stand / alcove shop as a quick bite to eat for workers, etc.
I'm curious as to the typical seasonings that would've been available to the cooks of the time. Additionally would the meat have come from cows or is there another meat animal they would've butchered?
Finally, was this a wide-spread practice or more a local thing for specific Roman cities?
Your post really caught my eye as I've been writing about something very similar to this in my PhD thesis - I haven't seen the documentary you mention (don't suppose you know of an online version of it do you? Or just the title? I'd love to see it...) but I'm guessing there's some crossover of sources. What I've been arguing is that one of the activities seen in part of the Megalopsychia Mosaic at Yakto, near Antioch, is something very like what you describe.
The border of this mosaic shows a variety of vignettes of urban street life - the one in question can be seen here. Two workers are shown using pairs of tools, held one in each hand, to manipulate a material of some kind on the upper surface of a large cylindrical object with tripod legs. The limitations of the mosaic medium mean that it is difficult to discern the exact nature of the tools in the workers’ hands, but they appear to be spatula-shaped blades with handles perpendicular to the cutting edge.
A modern parallel for the use of such tools in the preparation of meat-based street food comes from a location that is not too distant geographically from Antioch. Kokoreç is a popular offal-based dish in Turkey to this day, which is prepared in one of two main forms: a large doner kebab-like preparation grilled on a skewer, and a more amorphous dish (served on bread) of offal minced on a flat griddle as it is cooked. The latter of these preparation methods was featured in a recent documentary film about the food of Istanbul (Ottolenghi's Mediterranean Feast, here's a screenshot). The twin knives used for mincing the offal resemble the tools shown on the mosaic, and there are noticeable similarities between the positions of the body and hands of the cook engaged in this activity and those of the Yakto workers.
If we accept that the mosaic’s scene does show workers mincing meat, the question remains as to what the cylindrical objects are. Pitarakis identifies them as vessels, with the workers “swinging” their utensils within the vessels.^1 However, this activity would not seem to accord with the apparent downward motion implied by the positions of the workers’ arms, with elbows held to their sides and forearms raised to place their hands directly above the surfaces of the cylinders.
The tripod cylinders do bear a similarity to a simple butcher’s block made from a section of tree-trunk, and the red tesserae used to show the upper surfaces may well be indicating blood. Levi also suggests that the red tesserae represent the mincing of meat. His interpretation of the cylinders, however, against which Pitarakis argues, is that they are braziers. If both of Levi’s conclusions are correct, a solid plate rather than a grill would be needed to keep the meat from dropping into the fire, resulting in an arrangement resembling a barbecue with a flat griddle pan. In this case the resulting dish, cooked and minced simultaneously, would be very similar to the kokoreç shown in the documentary. A further detail of the mosaic depiction that may lend credence to the brazier interpretation is the presence of matching squares of four lighter tesserae on the left-hand side of each cylinder: while it is possible that these are simply an element of the shading scheme used to show curvature, I suggest that they are indicating the reflectivity of a polished metal surface.
With regard to the seasonings available, the most prevalent by far is black pepper. At Berenike, one of the Red Sea ports that was a major entrepôt for spices coming in to the empire, the number of peppercorns amongst the charred plant remains found during excavations outweighed even lentils.^2 The dominance of pepper is also apparent from a simple analysis of the "cookbook" De Re Coquinaria pseudepigraphically attributed to Apicius (dating from the 4th-5th century, but primarily a compilation of earlier recipes). Pepper is not only the most common ingredient included in recipes, in terms of both number of times mentioned and number of recipes in which it is mentioned, but once stopwords such as 'the', 'and', etc. have been removed from the text it is the most common word overall.
Here is a graph I put together showing the relative prevalence of different seasonings in De Re Coquinaria. As far as other seasonings go, lovage was particularly popular, as were coriander, cumin, rue (a bitter herb) and 'laser'. Laser/laserpitium is quite interesting in itself. True laser supposedly became extinct during Nero's reign, the last stalk apparently being given to him, as it was so popular but also so rare (growing only in a small area of North Africa) that it was overharvested. It is generally thought that asafoetida replaced it in cuisine after this, and it seems that the name 'laser' stuck even for the substitute.
Leeks and pine kernels also turn up in quite a few of the Apicius recipes, and it could certainly be argued that they are used primarily for their flavours. Another widely available seasoning was fenugreek, which could be grown in abundance within the boundaries of the Empire - the Kellis Agricultural Account Book mentions a tenant farmer giving his landlord fenugreek in place of wheat, which would seem to be in accordance with the identical prices given in Diocletian's Edict on Maximum Prices for each of the crops. Fenugreek continues to be used as a flavouring in breads in North Africa to the present day.
Many of the spices used were imported from distant parts of the world, and therefore quite expensive, but in many cases the choice of seasoning could depend on the range of plants growing close by. For example, Sulpicius Severus, writing in the 4th to 5th Century, offers an interesting vignette regarding life in monastic kitchens, which leads to some inferences about regional and social variation in the use of spices.^3 He refers to a slave-boy he has sent to the bishop Paul to work in his kitchens, warning that he should keep him out of the garden as he enjoys cutting down plants with a sword. “I sent a little boy to you out of our own workshop. He is quite skilful enough to cook pale beans and to pickle homely beetroot, with vinegar and sauce, as well as to prepare cheap porridge for the jaws of the hungry monks. He knows nothing, however, of pepper or of laser, but he is quite at home with cumin, and is especially clever in plying the noisy mortar with sweetly smelling plants.” This boy, apparently quite young if we are to judge by his delight in chopping down plants in gardens, is familiar only with certain spices and herbs. My own thought on this is that it may reflect a background without access to the expensive imported spices, using the locally available flavourings instead - of course we cannot tell where this boy has come from (Sulpicius was Aquitainian, but that is not to say the boy was local to him), but cumin grows in some parts of the Mediterranean, and the mention of sweetly smelling plants suggests the use of fresh produce.
You also asked about the meat used - pork is most likely (cows being useful for their milk so in many cases more valuable alive). Quite a few of the extant Roman images of butchers' shops make it clear that pork is being sold, with pigs' heads turning up on the counters.
I hope this has been of some use, and is appropriate for /r/askhistorians. I could talk or write for hours on this subject but really must go to bed! Please do feel free to ask about anything else related to this though, I'd be happy to continue tomorrow.
^(1. Pitarakis, B. 2012. "Daily life at the marketplace in Late Antiquity and Byzantium". Trade and Markets in Byzantium. C. Morrisson. Washington, DC, Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection: 402.)
^(2. Cappers, R. T. J. 2006. Roman foodprints at Berenike : archaeobotanical evidence of subsistence and trade in the Eastern Desert of Egypt. Los Angeles, Cotsen Institute of Archaeology, University of California. Sorry, can't find page ref at the moment.)
^(3. Sulpicius Severus Ep. III to Paul.)
