I once checked out a translation of a Roman cookbook from the library. A few recipes called for the very expensive (and now extinct) spice siphilum(sp).

The cookbook had a cheat for doing them cheaper. You placed some pine nuts in a sealed container with some asafoetida for a while, and then you ground up the pine buts and used them instead of the siphilum.

I think I've run across a few other references to it in folk medicine and ethnic cooking, but can't recall any.