Crispy Parthian Chicken

De Re Coquinaria
Apicius

400-500 A.D.

Crispy Parthian Chicken, The Saison.

To open De Re Coquinaria, the ancient Roman cookbook attributed to Apicius, is to enter a world where excess and elegance blur into the same golden glaze.

It is not a cookbook in any modern sense, but a palimpsest of imperial appetite—formulae without measurements, commands without preamble, and flavor profiles that oscillate between the decadent and the alien. And yet its influence, like Rome itself, is hard to overstate.

Compiled in the late 4th or early 5th century CE, De Re Coquinaria preserves the culinary traditions of Rome at its most cosmopolitan. The text is an uneven layering of eras and authors, stitched together under the borrowed name of Apicius — likely a reference to Marcus Gavius Apicius, the famed (and famously self-destructive) gourmand of the first century. Whether he penned any of these recipes is beside the point. His name became shorthand for culinary luxury, the way Escoffier or Julia might today.

What survives in these pages is not mere instruction, but an assertion of power through taste. Roman kitchens, especially elite ones, were sites of conquest in miniature. Spices came from India, dates from Egypt, fish sauce (garum) from the coasts of Spain. Flavors mingled as provinces did, often violently. To eat in this world was to perform one's mastery over geography, wealth, and flesh.

And then there is Parthian Chicken—a recipe that, like much in De Re Coquinaria, resists classification. It is not strictly a roast, nor a stew. Its name references Rome’s eastern rivals, the Parthians, yet its flavor profil, black pepper, lovage, caraway, wine, and the sulfurous whiff of asafetida, feels more like a negotiation than a tribute. The original preparation is brief, almost cryptic. The Joseph Dommers Vehling translation states:

1. Dress the chicken carefully and quarter it.

2. Crush pepper, lovage, and a little caraway, moistened with broth.

3. Add wine to taste.

4. After frying, place the chicken in an earthen dish.

5. Pour the seasoning over it, add laser and wine.

6. Let it assimilate with the seasoning and braise the chicken to a point.

7. When done sprinkle with pepper and serve.

What does one do with such instructions? The modern cook must improvise, interpret, lean into the silences. In our version, we begin with a light flour coating, searing the chicken to a crisp before letting it yield into a broth spiced not for comfort but for clarity. The wine lifts, the caraway deepens, the asafetida lingers at the edge of pungency.

The book doesn’t just contain ancient recipes, they are edible ruins, half-collapsed and waiting to be reimagined. And when the scent rises from the pan — sharp, rich, slightly unfamiliar — you begin to imagine what Rome tasted like at dusk.

Crispy Parthian Chicken, The Saison.

Ingredients

• 1 lb. of boneless chicken breasts

• 1 tablespoon of olive oil

• 1 cup of white wine

• 1 cup of chicken broth

• 1 tablespoon of dried lovage (eliminate if pregnant)

• 1 teaspoon of black pepper

• 1 teaspoon of dried caraway

• 1 teaspoon of asafetida (a strong scented replacement for now-extinct laser)

• Flour and additional salt and pepper

Directions

1. Preheat an oven to 425 degrees.

2. Heat olive oil in a cast iron skillet over medium-high heat.

3. Season chicken with salt and pepper and dredge in flour.

4. When the skillet is hot, add the chicken flour-side down and fry for 2-3 minutes or until golden brown. Turn and repeat.

5. Remove the skillet from heat and pour in the wine-herb mixture.

6. Place in the oven and braise for 25 minutes.

7. Serve over rice with the sauce drizzled over top.