Cookery and Dining in Imperial Rome by Apicius

'This book is meant to be used as a cookery-book rather than read as a curiosity of literature.' Had she lived to see the final result it would certainly contain fewer faults.' In the following winter I resumed work alone. 'When Barbara Flower died in July 1955 we had worked through the whole book together, and the translation of most of Book I, the whole of Book II, and most of Book III had been written. Review 100% of 1 Feb, totally rewritten as I had another go at reading some more of the book, but didn't get much further For 1700 years the Greeks were tied up, often ruled, by the Romans who idolised Greek culture. Our political systems, quite a lot of the legal arguments (they were a very litigious bunch), our plays, poetry and architecture is still relateable. Greek culture is still relevant in the West. History books interest me, especially ones of culture rather than politics, because we are the children of those that went before and some things only change slowly. And when it became apparent that the recipes (when the book finally got to them) were just a reason for the author to make annotations and notes and he wasn't really interested in the food as much as deconstructing Appicus, I gave it up. What about a mid-morning snack? When they passed a takeaway did they pop in for something fried or did these place sell sweet snacks, pastries and confectionaries? What did the wealthy people of 'Imperial Rome' consider comfort food? But there are few details of what Romans ate for breakfast. There is much detail of what Romans ate for feasts, there were certainly takeaway restaurants in Pompeii and wooden structures meant that from time immemorial in almost every country there were communal ovens, usually the baker's. I had expected a certain amount of background, but not a very detailed, occasionally smarmy, often derogatory criticism of the previous translations of the book published through the ages If you are interested in Apicius as a historical figure and what all the various translators made of his book, then you might enjoy this a lot more than I did. All these technicalities got in the way of the recipes and were oppressive. There were more notes, more discussion, and notes about the notes. I gave it up because the notes, appendices, indices, introductions, prefaces, explanations of typsetting, Apiciana and vocabularies were oppressive. When I'm in the US, Whole Foods is my kitchen!īut the book didn't deliver. All that chopping and fat spattering and cleaning up.

I've cooked in restaurants, I just hate it.

That's a bit disingenuous as I don't actually have an oven or a hob, if a microwave or rice cooker can't manage it then I can't either. I wanted to know what the Romans ate and how I could cook versions of the food.

Cookery and Dining in Imperial Rome by Apicius