Apicius

Apicius, also known as De re culinaria or De re coquinaria (On the Subject of Cooking), is a collection of Roman cookery recipes, which may have been compiled in the fifth century AD, or earlier. Its language is in many ways closer to Vulgar than to Classical Latin, with later recipes using Vulgar Latin (such as ficatum, bullire) 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" 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. Many of the recipes contain the ingredient silphium, which is speculated to have become extinct in the first century AD, which supports the earlier date. However, based on textual analysis, the food scholar Bruno Laurioux believes that the surviving version dates only 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".

Apicius, also known as De re culinaria or De re coquinaria (On the Subject of Cooking), is a collection of Roman cookery recipes, which may have been compiled in the fifth century AD, or earlier. Its language is in many ways closer to Vulgar than to Classical Latin, with later recipes using Vulgar Latin (such as ficatum, bullire) 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" 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. Many of the recipes contain the ingredient silphium, which is speculated to have become extinct in the first century AD, which supports the earlier date. However, based on textual analysis, the food scholar Bruno Laurioux believes that the surviving version dates only 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".

Editions

's privately printed version of Apicius Once manuscripts surfaced, there were two early printed editions of Apicius, in Milan (1498, under the title In re quoquinaria) and Venice (1500). 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 Vinidarius manuscript. Between 1498 (the date of the first printed edition) and 1936 (the date of Joseph Dommers Vehling's translation into English and bibliography of Apicius), there were 14 editions of the Latin text (plus one possibly apocryphal edition). The work was not widely translated, however; the first translation was into Italian, in 1852, followed in the 20th century by two translations into German and French. The French translation by Bertrand Guégan was awarded the 1934 Prix Langlois by the Académie française.

Text derived from https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=1364296215 under CC BY-SA 4.0; modifications have been made.