[Sca-cooks] Apician date recipe

[tgl at mailer.uni-marburg.de]

> > Where was Apicius writing his book?
> Rome, 1st Century CE (14-37)

I should like to point out (once again), that -- as far as I can see --
the Apicius-collection we have in our hands now, is NOT a text _written
by_ Apicius. The real Apicius (the gourmand) was born around 25 B.C.
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 was finished by the end of the fourth or the beginning
of the fifth century. It seems that about 2/3 of the recipes in this
collection can be said to go back to the two lost works of Apicius
somehow, while the rest of the material is taken from different texts on
agriculture, dietetics partly written in Greek. For more details see
Maier, ed., Das römische Kochbuch ..., Stuttgart 1991, 250f. and E.
Brandt, Untersuchungen zum römischen Kochbuche, 1927.

Th.