IF the TV show Come Dine With Me had been around in Roman times, what might you have expected to have for dinner?

Colchester Arcaeological Society has unearthed some items which give us an insight into what the Romans ate in Britain’s oldest recorded town.

People prepared and ate food in Roman Colchester, just as we do, now.

They too used food for religious purposes, bymaking offerings to the pagan gods at temples or to their dead at the graveside, and by sharing funerary feasts in cemeteries.

Chicken bones were discovered at the site of the Roman Christian church and cemetery off Butt Road.

But far more ordinary daily food was consumed in Roman Colchester.

In the town centre, fragments of large ceramic containers which were used to import and store foods, such as wine, olive oil, olives and a fish sauce called garum from Spain or Italy, were discovered.

Fragments of food-preparation bowls, which were used to grind grains into flour were also found.

The Romans introduced the brown hare to Britain which they ate with vegetables such as garlic, onions, leeks, turnips, cabbages, peas and asparagus.

There is evidence of raised Roman earthen beds, possibly for growing asparagus, on a site just outside the Balkerne Gate.

Animal bones have been found in rubbish-pits, and fruit seeds and nutshell fragments in Roman cess pits.

In 1974, a large heap of empty oyster shells was found outside the Balkerne Gate, where there must have been a Roman fastfood stall by the side of the road, selling oysters to passers-by.

The bones of chicken and other domestic fowl, pig, sheep, goat, cattle, different species of fish and of wild birds have also been discovered. Romans had voracious appetites.

Perhaps the most remarkable evidence of Roman food, is the unused items excavated in the town centre.

Last year, during an excavation at Williams and Griffin, archaeologists uncovered a group of Roman foods which had been preserved by burning.

Peas, lentils, figs and dates, were all found.

They were kept in small piles on a wooden shelf in a room within a house in the Roman town.

The house was burned down during the Boudiccan revolt of AD 61.

The shelf was burned and seems to have slumped to the floor, when some of the food items rolled off. Some of the food items were carbonised by the fire.

The pagan ancient Romans did not, of course, celebrate Easter, and Christian ancient Romans did not give chocolate eggs or rabbits.

However, real eggs and real hares in the form of eggshell fragments and hare bones were found in the Culver Street excavations in the Eighties.

It is known the Romans ate little sweet treats which they bought from confectioners, and there is a surviving Roman recipe for making such treats – stuffed dates – at home.

Perhaps the Romans even bought or made sweet treats to give to each other as gifts.

But they didn’t have chocolate.