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ApiciusWe have 1 book for this author.Apicius is the title of a collection of Roman cookery recipes, usually thought to have been compiled in the late 4th or early 5th century AD and written in a language that is in many ways closer to Vulgar than to Classical Latin. Apicius is a text to be used in the kitchen. In the earliest printed editions it was given the overall title De re coquinaria ("On the Subject of Cooking"), and was attributed to an otherwise unknown "Caelius Apicius", an invention based on the fact that one of the two manuscripts is headed with the words "API CAE". The name Apicius had long been associated with excessive love of food, apparently from the habits of an early bearer of the name. The most famous individual given this name because of his reputation as a gourmet was Marcus Gavius Apicius, who is sometimes mistakenly asserted to be the author of the book. The text is organised in ten short books which appear to be arranged rather like a modern cookbook:
The contents are out of order, with some recipes in the wrong chapters. Some recipes are there in two versions, some are clearly truncated, sometimes one line must be missing. The foods described in the book are important for reconstructing the dietary habits of the ancient world around the Mediterranean basin, since many of the foods identified with that region today—tomatoes, pasta—were not available in Antiquity. On the other hand, the recipes are geared for the wealthiest classes and some contain what were exotic ingredients at that time, e.g. flamingo. In a completely different manuscript there is also a very abbreviated epitome Apici Excerpta a Vinidario a "pocket Apicius" by a certain Vinidarius, made in the 5th century. However, although it says so in the title, this booklet is not an excerpt from the manuscript we have today. It contains text that is not in the longer Apicius-manuscripts. Either text was lost between the time the excerpt was made and the time the manuscripts were written, or there never was a "standard Apicius" text, because every cook would add his own notes. Once manuscripts surfaced, there were two early printed editions of Apicius, in Milan (1498) and Venice (1500). But in the flood of heavy tomes of pagan and Christian antiquity, it was delightful to read a Roman cookbook. Four more editions in the next four decades reflect the appeal of Apicius. In the long-standard edition of C. T. Schuch (Heidelberg, 1867), the editor added some recipes from the Vindarius-manuscript. External linksLatin text
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This biographical information was gathered from the Apicius page, courtesy of the Wikipedia project. BooksDe re coquinaria |
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