[Sca-cooks] Free redactions of Roman recipes

[Terry Decker]

Actually, that is a Wiki simplification  Edward Brandt, who is the unquoted 
authority for this information, did the analysis of the text in the late 
1920's and came to the conclusion that the the work was a compilation of a 
number of earlier sources including Apuleius and Palladius rewritten in 
common Latin for a broader audience and general use.  Brandt believed that 
the more luxurious recipes in the collection may represent an earlier 
version of Apicius.  There is no way to definitively state whether or not 
the recipes of M. Gavius Apicius are in the compilation.

M. Gavius Apicius is known to have existed in the 1st Century from the works 
of such authors as Pliny, Seneca, Tacitus and Athenaeus.  He was known to 
have written texts on cooking and is tied to a number of kitchen inventions 
by Apion in a lost text entitled, On the Luxury of Apicius.  According to 
Odo of Cluny, Apicius wrote a text on cooking and a text on sauces.  St. 
Jerome, who was contemporary of or predated the compiler of Apicius used the 
phrase "sauces of Apicius" in reference to Jovinian.  And Isidore of Seville 
refers to Apicius as the author of the first cookbook and as a person whose 
gluttony killed him.

Flower and Rosenbaum point out that in the available texts, recipes for food 
and sauces are combined, suggesting that there are earlier texts that 
combined Apicius's works on cooking and sauces and that one of these was 
incorporated in the compilation.  They also note that Vinidarius's excerpts 
from the 5th or 6th Centuries are from a different source than the 
compilation.

So the whole question is not as cut and dried as Wikipedia makes it seem.

Bear

-----Original Message----- 

Just to be clear, the gourmet Apicius was first century, but he is not
believed to have had anything to do with the work, which is generally dated 
to
the fourth or fifth century and may have been compiled by several hands.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apicius

"Apicius" seems to have become a kind of general term for a gourmet just as
Pseudo-Apicius; it is a little too easy to blur the lines between the
historical  figure and the (unknown) author or authors of the work.

Jim  Chevallier
_www.chezjim.com_ (http://www.chezjim.com/)

Early  Medieval French wine
http://leslefts.blogspot.com/2014/03/early-medieval-french-wine.html




In a message dated 4/4/2014 3:12:45 P.M. Pacific Daylight Time,
t.d.decker at att.net writes:

While  Apicius is 1st Century CE, there are excerpts transcribed in the 5th
or  6th Century

_______________________________________________
Sca-cooks mailing list
Sca-cooks at lists.ansteorra.org
http://lists.ansteorra.org/listinfo.cgi/sca-cooks-ansteorra.org