[Sca-cooks] Fw: [Apicius] Apicius

[Terry Decker]

The Flower and Rosenbaum translation has the following to say about
"exbormare;"  "this rare verb is derived, according to Schuch, whose opinion
appears to have been adopted by the dictionaries, from the Greek word
'bromos,' 'bad smell'; accordingly it should mean 'to rid of bad smell.'
The verb occurs twice in Apicius and once in the excerpts of Vinidarius (iv,
in the Teubner Apicius ed.).  In the first Apicius passage, p. 66 (Apicius
2.2.9), it can only mean 'to boil'; Schuch altered the text in this case and
transformed the chicken bones into date-stones, which would easily go bad
and give a bad smell.  In the second passage, p. 142 (Apicius 6.2.3), the
meaning is not so clear, with turnips, 'losing their bad smell' might mean
'losing their pungency.'  But is it possible that the passage should be
interpreted 'boil the turnips so they can be peeled'?  The passage in the
excerpts of Vinidarius reads: 'ofellas assas exbromabis diligenter et in
saxtagine mittes'; could 'exbromare' here mean 'to skin'?"

I don't happen to have the Milham translation of Apicius, but it would be
interesting to see what she made of the word..

As for these references being related to humoral theory, I would tend to
doubt it.  Galen, who is recognized as the father of humoral theory, was
writing in the mid to late 2nd Century.  Most of the texts compiled into the
work we refer to as "Apicius" pre-date or are roughly contemporary to Galen,
making a strong connection to humoral theory unlikely.  The two Apician
recipes you quote are probably from the pen of M. Gavius Apicius and as he
pre-dates Galen's work by almost a century, it is unlikely he is making
reference to humoral theory.

The compiler did translate the Greek works incorporated in Apicius into
Latin and apparently modified the Classical Latin of Apicius' work to a more
modern (4th or 5th Century modern, that is) linguistic form, but appears to
have made no major edits of the content.  This suggests that humoral theory
was not introduced at a later date.

Humors are part of the nature of a thing and can not be taken from it (if I
grasp the theory correctly).  Humors can be offset in degree.  Boiling would
not remove the humors.  It would be used to offset dry and cold humors with
wet and heat.  Anthimus, who (IIRC) was influenced by Galen, might be
practicing humoral theory with his boiling, but I doubt "exbromatas" means
to "drive out evil humors."

Bear