SC - cod and parrottongues / Apicius

[LrdRas@aol.com]

Ana wrote:
>>>
I wonder if someone remember a Roman recipe for parrottongues. They
imported parrottongues from Africa, how did they prepare it? Is it in
Apicius or in other texts? 
<<<

As far as I can see, Apicius has no recipe for parrottongues, and the
only passage where parrot (_psittacus_) is mentioned is at the end of
the flamingo recipe in VI 6.1:

"Idem facies et in psittaco"
'The same way you can do it with the parrot'.

Given this close connection between flamingo and parrot, perhaps a
passage from Pliny's Naturalis Historia could be interesting. He says:

"Phoenicopteri linguam praecipui saporis esse Apicius docuit, nepotum
omnium altissimus gurges" (X 133; ed. Mayhoff II, 259,5ff.).

roughly

'Apicius held that the tongue of the flamingo has an excellent taste, he
who was an outstanding gourmet/glutton among all the squanderers'.

In addition Martial has a passage about the phoenicopterus, the
flamingo:

"Dat mihi pinna rubens nomen, sed lingua gulosis
Nostra sapit. Quid si garrula lingua foret?"

Could be something like:

'I have my name from the reddish/coloured feathers, but my tongue is
delicious to the gourmets. (...)'

Alas, these passages do not indicate how the tongues were prepared.

***

Let me add a few words about Apicius and the Apicius-collection.

Ras wrote:
"Apicius although technically a Roman source is available to us from
manuscripts written in period. For all we know it could be a medieval
source (e.g., the manuscripts are certainly medieval) written by someone
using Apicius as a pen name."

The real Apicius was born around 25 B.C. He had a bad reputation in his
time, and his teachings seem to have been widespread in the first
century. Very probably he wrote a general cookbook and a more special
cookbook on sauces. These works are lost now. What has come down to us
under the name of Apicius (henceforth Apicius-collection) was finished
by the end of the fourth century. It seems that about 2/3 of the recipes
in this collection can be said to stem from the two lost works of
Apicius while the rest of the material is taken from different texts on
agriculture, dietetics partly written in Greek. The more luxurious
recipes from the lost works were left out, and thus Pliny could mention
Apicius's statement about flamingo tongues but we do not find a recipe
in the Apicius-collection. [See R. Maier, ed., Das ro"mische Kochbuch
..., Stuttgart 1991, 250f. following E. Brandt, Untersuchungen zum
ro"mischen Kochbuche, 1927.] 

Sure, the manuscripts of the Apicius-collection are medieval (9th
century onwards) but this applies to almost every text of classical
literature and, by the way, to many other authors relevant to culinary
history like Cato maior, Columella or Varro. Anyway, I think we would
not say that Homer is a medieval author because there are
Homer-manuscripts from the Middle Ages.

Please correct me if I am wrong, but _if_ this picture is true, the text
of the Apicius-collection we use in our editions and translations is 4th
century and not 'medieval' and cannot easily be used to explore medieval
practice.

Cheers,
Thomas

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