SC - Apicius
Jessica Tiffin
jessica at beattie.uct.ac.za
Thu Sep 23 11:39:40 PDT 1999
hi, Sofonisba.
> with more books. :-) One of today's finds was The Roman Cookery of Apicius:
> A Treasury of Gourmet Recipes & Herbal Cookery Translated and Adapted for
> the Modern Kitchen by John Edwards. Have others had experience with this
> particular translation? Comments?
It's the only one I've ever managed to get my hands on, actually...
:<. He gives you original recipes and his versions; no way of
checking what his translation is like, since he doesn't give you the
original Latin. (Not that it would help, in my case... oh, well).
His versions of the recipes are somewhat dicey - I tend to ignore
them and go with the original, since he's pretty strong on the
"adapted for the modern kitchen" and the whole, dubious "modern
taste" thing. I went through a major Apicius salad stage - these
massive layered salads with all sorts of ingredients. Edwards is
capable of blithely advising you to serve the vegetable bits on a
buttered roll, rather than layering them with oil-and-vinegar-soaked
bread as the original specifies, because in his opinion the whole
layered with bread effect would be too alienating to a modern taste.
I seem to recollect someone on the list advising me that the actual
translation was OK; just don't trust his reworking of the recipes.
IIRC, he also includes quotes from other Latin works relating to food
and eating - quite a lot of fun. The book is basically a useful
resource since he includes translations of the original Latin
recipes.
Jehanne
Jehanne de Huguenin, called Melisant * Seneschal, Shire of Adamastor, Cape Town
(Jessica Tiffin, University of Cape Town)
Sable, three owls rising argent, each maintaining a willow slip vert.
users.iafrica.com/m/me/melisant/stidings.htm
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