[Sca-cooks] Re: (a few excerpts from Apicius)

[El Hermoso Dormiendo]

It's an interesting (and plausible) possibility - after all there do appear to 
be numerous examples of authors publishing books under the names of famous 
"ancient" people to lend their publications some credibility ("Basil 
Valentine's" "Triumphal Chariot of Antimony", for example).

To me, the translations I've seen of Apicius describe a style of food that 
don't seem similar to the documented medieval European styles of food that 
I've seen (with few specific exceptions e.g. fish sauce), so I don't know 
that a practice described in translations of Apicius could be assumed to 
relate to medieval European practices, necessarily.  If it's genuine (i.e. 
actually written by Apicius in "Ancient Rome" days) then I wouldn't assume 
that any practice described in it was necessarily carried over 600+ years to 
be continued in medieval Europe.  (Some may have, some may have not, some may 
have been "re-discovered" independent of any ancient Roman practices.)

Combining these two thoughts, it does seem plausible that some medieval 
European author could have written a book on what the author thought sounded 
like ancient Roman cuisine (rather than being a "real" book from ancient 
Rome) and simply ascribed it to Apicius...and this amuses me to no end, 
because it brings up the possibility that people of any age always think that 
"primitive" peoples from hundreds of years ago must have been forced to eat 
"rotten" food because they didn't have "modern" (relative to the thinker) 
culinary techniques and materials, rather than assuming that the medieval 
author was dictating common medieval practices into the faked "ancient Roman" 
recipes.

(The latter is pure speculation on my part out of amusement - I've not 
actually seen any documentation to suggest this...except maybe Apicius itself 
if it were to turn out to be a medieval work...didn't I hear somewhere that 
in Renaissance Italy there was a contemporary equivalent to the SCA dedicated 
to recreating "Ancient Rome"?...if so, perhaps had this same loud argument 
over whether or not those poor people so long ago must have had to eat rotten 
food all the time?  I guess the saying is wrong, it's not "history" that 
repeats itself, it's "historians"...)

On Wednesday 13 April 2005 12:39 am, Chris Stanifer wrote:
> --- Huette von Ahrens <ahrenshav at yahoo.com> wrote:
> > No that isn't true.  Just as cooking in the Middle Ages has changed in
> > the six hundred or so years since then, cooking changed from Apicius'
> > time to the Middle Ages.  I would say that Apicius reflected his time,
> > but not that of the Middle Ages.
>
> The assumption, I believe, is that the recipes in question may have
> *actually* been written during the middle ages (possibly later??), and not
> during the time of Apicius.  If this *is* the case (and I am not saying it
> is) then the argumeent holds true.  The comment you take issue with above
> was in reply to this theory.  If they were written during the middle ages,
> and they speak of food adulteration, then it can be assumed that food
> adulteration was practiced during the middle ages.
>
> WdG