[Sca-cooks] Byzantine Cooking

[Philip & Susan Troy]

Also sprach Stefan li Rous:
>was Apicius in the Byzantine Empire or in the
>western half of the Roman Empire? I can't remember if this was
>discussed here previously. Perhaps I just assume that with the
>comments about "Roman" cooking, despite the claims of those in
>Byzantine of being "Romans", that he was from the western half of
>things.

Apicius, who may or may not have written the text traditionally
associated with the name, is traditionally believed to be either one
of two possible suspects (both, in other words, famous, wealthy
gourmets bearing the name Apicius), one living in the reign of
Tiberius, and the other somewhat later (Hadrian? I forget...). But
whoever Apicius was, and whether or not he wrote a cookbook, he is
believed to be Western Empire.

On the other hand, IIRC, the earliest known copies of Apicius De Re
Coquinaria make it unclear when the text was actually written, and
there don't seem to be references to the text dating back to before
the seventh or eighth centuries, C.E., so to some extent we're
speculating that this is a Roman cookbook from the Imperial era. The
possibility exists that, just as there are certain similarities
between medieval court cookery as found in, say, 14th century Germany
and fifteenth century England, that a cookbook we associate with the
Western Roman Empire might have been used by cooks in Byzantium long
after the fall of the Western Empire. I mean, our knowledge of the
existence of the Apician text begins during the Byzantine Empire and
after the "fall of Rome", so there's a certain logic to it.

In addition, we have some key descriptions of Byzantine food
(particularly a wonderfully xenophobic and insulting account from
Bishop Liudprandt of Cremona -- let me see if I can remember this off
the top of my head -- "foul and stinking, soused in oil like some
drunkard's mess, and all sprinkled with some horrible fishy liquid")
that suggest it may have borne more resemblance, in certain respects,
to Roman cooking as described in Apicius than to the somewhat simpler
food of Northern Europe.

And then, of course, there's the fact that there are similarities
between most Mediterranean cuisines, so the idea of Byzantine cooks
cooking from a late or even post-Roman Empire (assuming it doesn't
actually date back to the reign of Tiberius, which I suppose it
actually could) source doesn't sound all that far-fetched.

We might want to look a little closer at Anthimus in this discussion, though...

Adamantius