Olla (Roman Pot) - Cookery

Cookery

Olla is a generic word for a cooking pot, such as would be used for vegetables, porridge, pulse and such. The 1st-century BC scholar Varro gives an "absurd" etymology that derives the word for vegetables, olera or holera, from olla; although as a matter of scientific linguistics the derivation may be incorrect, it indicates that cookery was considered essential to the pot's function. Isidore of Seville said that the word olla derived from ebullit, "it boils up," and describes a patera as an olla with the sides flattened out more broadly. It was a word of ordinary usage, and does not appear in literary works by Vergil, Horace, and Ovid.

Unlike the aenum or cauldron, which hung over the fire from chains, the olla had a flat bottom for resting on a hot surface, though it might also be placed directly on logs or coals in rustic cookery. The kitchen reconstructed at the House of the Vettii from Pompeii shows a large olla set on a tripod on the stove.