Part 4/12:

While the exact preparations of the snails served at this thermopolium remain unclear, one recipe from the Roman cookbook Apicius De Re Coquinaria describes a straightforward method for cooking snails. The ancient dish, known as cocleas, is made by frying snails with salt and oil, and basting them with a mixture of silphium (a now-extinct spice), garum (fermented fish sauce), and pepper. Due to the rarity of silphium at that time and its extinction long before the recipe was recorded, a substitute known as asafoetida is employed in its place.