Apicius

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This article is about the Roman cookbook. For other uses, see Apicius (disambiguation).
The Apicius manuscript (ca. 900 AD) of the monastery of Fulda in Germany, which was acquired in 1929 by the New York Academy of Medicine

Apicius, also known as De re culinaria or De re coquinaria (On the Subject of Cooking) is a collection of Roman cookery recipes. It is thought to have been compiled in the 1st century AD in a language in many ways closer to Vulgar than to Classical Latin. Later recipes using Vulgar Latin (such as ficatum, bullire) were added to earlier recipes using Classical Latin (such as iecur, fervere).

The book has been 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"[1] or rather because a few recipes are attributed to Apicius in the text: Patinam Apicianam sic facies (IV, 14) Ofellas Apicianas (VII, 2). It has also been attributed to Marcus Gavius Apicius, a Roman gourmet who lived sometime in the 1st century AD during the reign of Tiberius. The book also may have been authored by a number of different Roman cooks from the first century AD.[2] Based on textual analysis, the food scholar Bruno Laurioux believes that the surviving version only dates from the fifth century (that is, the end of the Roman Empire): "The history of De Re Coquinaria indeed belongs then to the Middle Ages".[3]

Organization[]

Apicius, De re culinaria (Lyon: Sebastianus Gryphium, 1541)

The Latin text is organized in ten books with Greek titles, in an arrangement similar to that of a modern cookbook:[4]

  1. Epimeles — The Careful Housekeeper
  2. Sarcoptes — The Meat Mincer, Ground-beef
  3. Cepuros — The Gardener, Vegetables
  4. Pandecter — Many Ingredients
  5. Ospreon — Pulse, Legumes
  6. Aeropetes — Birds, Poultry
  7. Polyteles — The Gourmet
  8. Tetrapus — The Quadruped, Four-legged animals
  9. Thalassa — The Sea, Sea-food
  10. Halieus — The Fisherman

Foods[]

The foods described in the book are useful for reconstructing the dietary habits of the ancient world around the Mediterranean Basin.[citation needed] But the recipes are geared for the wealthiest classes, and a few contain what were exotic ingredients at that time (e.g., flamingo). A sample recipe from Apicius (8.6.2–3) follows:[5]

  • Aliter haedinam sive agninam excaldatam: mittes in caccabum copadia. cepam, coriandrum minutatim succides, teres piper, ligusticum, cuminum, liquamen, oleum, vinum. coques, exinanies in patina, amulo obligas. [Aliter haedinam sive agninam excaldatam] <agnina> a crudo trituram mortario accipere debet, caprina autem cum coquitur accipit trituram.
  • Hot kid or lamb stew. Put the pieces of meat into a pan. Finely chop an onion and coriander, pound pepper, lovage, cumin, garum, oil, and wine. Cook, turn out into a shallow pan, thicken with wheat starch. If you take lamb you should add the contents of the mortar while the meat is still raw, if kid, add it while it is cooking.

Alternative editions[]

De opsoniis et condimentis (Amsterdam: J. Waesbergios), 1709. Frontispiece of the second edition of Martin Lister's privately printed version of Apicius

In a completely different manuscript, there is also a very abbreviated epitome entitled Apici excerpta a Vinidario, a "pocket Apicius" by "an illustrious man" named Vinidarius, made as late as the Carolingian era.[6] The Vinidarius of this book may have been a Goth, in which case his Gothic name may have been Vinithaharjis (