[Sca-cooks] Anise and Bread - Pliny Re: The benefits of Anise

Johnna Holloway johnna at sitka.engin.umich.edu
Thu Feb 21 04:33:09 PST 2008


I pulled Andrew Dalby's  Flavours of Byzantium off the shelf here
last night and looked up this recipe. His translated version appears on 
page 180.

The source of the original recipe is given as "De Cibis 2."

De Cibis is described by Dalby on page 48 as being "a manuscript 
compilation...
addressed to a seventh century emperor, presumably by a court physician."

Looking in the bibliography, De Cibis is given as being edited by 
Ideler. 1841-1842.

Going back to page 127, it turns out that a scholar named Ideler edited 
a collection of various texts in the early 1840's. These were published 
in Greek in Berlin.
This collection includes De Cibis.

Dalby notes that this collection is now available as part of the TLG 
CD-ROM set
that is published by the University of California at Irvine.

So what is this TLG set? TLC stands for Thesaurus Linguae Graecae. It's 
described at
http://www.tlg.uci.edu/ 
I can tell you that various academic libraries offer access to the texts 
now through the TLG database, so
if you read Greek you should be able to locate the text in the database. 
I looked and it appears to be there.
*To view the texts in Greek, a Greek font has to be installed on your 
computer.*

Hope this helps.

Johnnae llyn Lewis





euriol wrote:
> I found another reference for a bread recipe with anise in the bread... I
> only have an english translation:
>
> Translation: by Andrew Dalby
> White Bread Bread made from wheat is the best and most nutritious of all
> foods. Particularly if white, with a moderate use of yeast and salt, the
> dough kneaded midway between dryness and rawness, and with a little anise,
> fennel seed and mastic, it is very fine indeed. One with a hot constitution
> should include sesame in the dough. If wishing to add more moistness to the
> bread, knead in some almond oil. 
> -Dalby, Andrew, Flavours of Byzantium, Great Britain: Prospect Books, 2003 
>
> I have yet to find a transliteration of the original recipe. snipped   Euriol





More information about the Sca-cooks mailing list