Conditum Paradoxum
De Re Coquinaria
Apicius
400-500 A.D.
Conditum Paradoxum, The Saison.
Few recipes in De Re Coquinaria reveal the Roman palate’s decadence and precision more intimately than Conditum Paradoxum — a name that translates, with characteristic Roman smugness, to “remarkable spiced wine” or “surprise spiced wine.”
But it is not the boast that lingers. It’s the alchemy: wine sweetened with honey, darkened by date pits, threaded with bay, mastic, saffron, and allspice, and filtered through ash. It is a drink not just of taste, but of spectacle. One could argue it was designed as much to be inhaled as swallowed.
To sip Conditum Paradoxum is to join an elite ritual. This was no rustic red swilled from earthenware, no tavern drink clutched by plebeian hand. Its ingredients read like an imperial trade map: saffron from the Levant, mastic from Chios, honey from the hills of Hymettus, allspice long before it had a name. The inclusion of charcoal—whether symbolic or functional—is the recipe’s most curious flourish, a blackened final note in an otherwise golden melody.
In this modern rendition, we preserve the shape if not the obscurities. The measurements have been translated into tablespoons and pinches. The crushed charcoal—once thought to purify, or perhaps to darken the color to a more regal hue — is replaced by a binchotan stick, which lends the ritual without the grit. The result is less syrupy than a mulled wine, less spiced than a clove-heavy glühwein. It is clear, heady, and strange. The honey settles first, the saffron blooms later. The bay and mastic hang in the background like a remembered conversation.
To serve it warm is to participate in antiquity. To chill it is to see its bones. Either way, it tastes less like a drink and more like a spell—measured not by how much you consume, but by what it stirs loose.
Ingredients
1 bottle of white wine
2 tablespoons of honey
6 date pits
3 bay leaves
About 20 allspice berries
1 teaspoon mastic
1 pinch of saffron
1 binchotan charcoal stick (optional)
Directions
Gently toast the date pits in a medium-high saute pan for 2-3 minutes. Remove from heat and set aside.
In a small saucepan, combine the honey and half the bottle of wine, bring to a boil.
When foam starts to accumulate, remove the pot from the heat and skim. Repeat three times.
Remove the wine from the heat and set aside.
With a mortar and pestle, lightly crush the pepper and mastic resin.
In a pitcher combine the honeyed-wine, bay leaves, date pits, saffron, the crushed mastic and pepper, and the remaining wine.
Refrigerate for 2-3 days.
Using a fine mesh strainer, strain the wine into a clean pitcher or bottle. Place the wine in the refrigerator to chill and serve.
Add a stick of binchotan charcoal, if you wish to further clarify the wine, and let sit in the fridge for another 1-2 days before serving.