Cookery and Dining in Imperial Rome

Description

Attributed to Apicius and probably assembled in the fifth century AD, this is the surviving recipe collection of the Roman world, written in a mixture of Classical and Vulgar Latin and organised into ten books with Greek titles. Its chapters move through meat, vegetables, seafood, poultry and rarer dishes, flamingo among them, setting out the ingredient combinations and cooking methods used at the tables of wealthy Romans around the Mediterranean.

What emerges is a cuisine built on layered sauces, strong seasonings and careful technique rather than simple roasting and boiling. Read today, the collection shows how much of ancient eating was a matter of blending and balancing, how far ingredients travelled to reach a Roman kitchen, and how a cook worked without measurements, timings or any of the apparatus a modern recipe assumes.