[Sca-cooks] News story on Malloch Rare Book Room of the New York Academy of Medicine

[Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius]

Also sprach Susan Laing:
>This was in today's New York times online -
>http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/02/nyregion/thecity/02rare.html?ex=1105333200
>&en=4b9ff10fb98af94e&ei=5070
>
>You need to be a registered member to access it (registration is free) but
>the "relevant to the cooks list" bit is the following snippet -
>
>"No, Ms. Mandelbaum and her associate Arlene Shaner would rather direct you
>to the main event, the books - to the "cookery" section, say, formed in part
>because of the herbal remedies old cookbooks provide. There you can find
>what Ms. Mandelbaum describes as "arguably the oldest known cookbook in the
>West." It's a second-century Roman text that ninth-century German monks
>copied with pen and ink on animal skins at the monastery at Fulda in the
>time of Charlemagne. "They seemed to like to eat elaborate birds, like
>peacocks," Ms. Shaner said of the Romans, "and to drink spiced wine."
>
>Sounds rather interesting!
>
>Mari de Paxford

While I haven't gone to the NYAoM and checked it out personally, I 
had a talk with a friend of mine who is a research librarian for NYU 
and Pratt Institute, as I looked for goodies that might be available 
through interlibrary loan, and I gather that what they're talking 
about is a copy of Apicius. (The second-century part may be based on 
an assumption that we know which of the Apicii we have record of was 
actually the author of the book -- if indeed it was any of them.) 
Which is plenty interesting in and of itself, but not something that 
would necessarily add hugely to our body of culinary research 
material.

Adamantius
-- 




"S'ils n'ont pas de pain, vous fait-on dire, qu'ils  mangent de la 
brioche!" / "If there's no bread to be had, one has to say, let them 
eat cake!"
	-- attributed to an unnamed noblewoman by Jean-Jacques 
Rousseau, "Confessions", 1782

"Why don't they get new jobs if they're unhappy -- or go on Prozac?"
	-- Susan Sheybani, assistant to Bush campaign spokesman Terry 
Holt, 07/29/04