not use vinegar to marinate the meat. Instead, the vinegar was mixed with the animal's blood during cooking. As the vinegar was added to the blood, it would slow down the clotting process and prevent the blood from spoiling. Dicaearchus, writing in the fourth and third centuries BC, stated that one of the dishes once served in Classical Sparta was a made using boiled pork. The pork was paid for using the money collected from each member eating at the Spartan mess () to purchase the pigs at the market. The mess () was a membership-based institution that Spartan adults would join upon completing their military training and was essentially a dinner club where men would banquet together. According to Plutarch, each Spartan mess member's monthly contribution included different kinds of produce and cash. This money was specified as "ten Aiginetan obols." The sum collected would allow them to purchase up to a dozen piglets per month as the raw ingredients for cooking black soup. The German scholar, Link, has also theorized that black soup was the contribution made by the poor Spartans to the , the extra voluntary donations of pre-prepared dishes and wheat bread. The British Hellenistic scholar W. Geoffrey Arnott has also raised the speculation that Spartan black soup was meatless, made using a black variety of chickpea or Bengal gram, but this theory has been refuted by classicists such as Maciej Kokoszko. Occasions of consumption How often the Spartans consumed black soup and whether it could be considered a delicacy are both debated questions in ancient sources. Seventh-century BC Spartan poet Alcman inferred that the food ordinary people in Sparta consumed was a pea soup, not the meat-based black soup. On this basis, the historian, Hans Van Wees, suggested that black soup could not be a dish that the average Spartans regularly consumed since it would entail the slaughtering of an animal. For example, it was during royal sacrifices that pigs were part of the offerings. There is also other contrary evidence suggesting that black soup was, in fact, a modest dish. In one of Matro of Pitane's poems, black soup appeared in the text alongside a dish named (). were boiled animal off-cuts, such as the skin, ears, and snouts, suggesting black soup belonged in the category of inexpensive dishes. Banquets According to Dicaearchus' , in Classical Sparta, the dishes served for communal banquets were