The first cookbook dates from the first century A.D. This compilation of recipes divided into ten books or chapters is only a fragment; baking and pastry are missing, which indicates that these were separate specialties.
De Re Coquinaria (Cooking Matters) is attributed to a man named Apicius, which means “epicure” or “gourmet.” The book was translated from Latin into Italian and German after the invention of the printing press in the fifteenth century, but an English translation didn't appear until 1936. Only 530 copies were printed because culinary history was in its infancy and there wasn't much interest in the subject. Translating the manuscript was a life-long dream and labor of love for Joseph Dommers Vehling, a world-class chef who grew up in a small town on the German-Dutch border and was trained and worked in the grand hotels of Europe before he became an executive chef planning menus for the railroads in the United States. Vehling loved food and cooking as well as the Latin language and Roman culture. A world traveler, he had visited the Roman ruins. In Pompeii, buried suddenly by a volcanic explosion in 79 A.D., he saw ancient bakeries, ovens, and flour mills; the olive oil, figs, lentils, and spices preserved in jugs and jars. Below are pictures of the ovens and the clay vessels-called amphoras (pronounced am FOR uhs)-still in Pompeii.
Vehling's goal was to set the record straight about the ancient Romans, “for our popular notions about their table are entirely erroneous and are in need of revision.” He felt that too many people believed fantastic stories about Roman banquets-which were rare-and satires like Petronius's Satyricon because these were the available sources. There is more historical information about banquets because educated, wealthy people wrote about them, whereas information about the customs of other classes is sparse. For example, 500 years from now culinary historians will be reading newspaper and magazine articles about what foods were served at the many celebrations of Julia Child's ninetieth birthday in the summer of 2002, but probably nothing about the dinner you had last night, which would reveal much more about how Americans really eat.
From the recipes of Apicius it is clear that the Romans liked sauces and meat. Food historian Mireille Corbier states that the ten most common ingredients in Apicius's 468 recipes are black pepper, garum, olive oil, honey, lovage, vinegar, wine, cumin, rue, and coriander. Absent is garlic, the seasoning of the poor. For the wealthy, a feast meant meat and meat meant pork: “nature made the pig for the banquet table.” Pigs were fattened and their livers enlarged in much the same way geese were prepared for foie gras until recently-force feeding. Pigs were fed dried figs, then guzzled mead. The liquid expanded the figs, which killed the pigs. True omnivores, the Romans ate sow's udders, calf's brains, flamingo tongues, sheep heads, pork sweetbreads, capon kidneys. Vehling says that the capon-a castrated male bird-was supposedly “invented” by a Roman surgeon in response to a law that made it illegal to fatten hens. So he castrated a rooster, which caused it to fatten naturally. Romans also raised the dormouse (Glis glis ) commercially, plumping and tenderizing these small mammals by confining them in earthenware vessels that looked like flower pots with ventilation holes and feeding them a high-fat diet of walnuts, chestnuts, and acorns. Rabbits and hares were also raised commercially. Dogs were eaten, too. Milk came from cows and camels. Cheeses, both domestic and imported, were eaten alone with bread or as an ingredient in other dishes. Olive oil was the main fat; butter-salted-was introduced centuries later when the Germanic barbarians invaded.
Vinegar added tang in these recipes in combination with honey or garum, while raisin wine and honey were the sweeteners for many main dishes. Honey was also used to preserve fruit and meat. Oregano and mint appear frequently but historians are still speculating about silphium. Food historian Tannahill says the herb is completely unknown now; others think it might be laserwort, the fang feng of Chinese medicine, used to treat sinus infections and fevers. Some historians think silphium was used to extinction because it prevented pregnancy.
The use of spices in some of the recipes is eerily modern. A recipe for pears could have come out of California 2,000 years later: “Stew the pears, clean out the center, crush them with pepper, cumin, honey, raisin wine, broth and a little oil; mix with eggs, make a pie [custard] of this, sprinkle with pepper and serve.” Apicius also included recipes for drinks, even floral wines. He gives recipes for rose wine, fake rose wine made with citrus leaves but without roses, and violet wine. But most recipes are based on sauces. For example, a fish sauce: “ . . . tak[e] one ounce of pepper, one pint of reduced wine, one pint of spiced wine and two ounces of oil.” In Roman cooking, a white sauce is made with white wine, white pepper, and egg yolks:
“Put yolks of hard boiled eggs in the mortar with white pepper, nuts, honey, white wine and a little broth.” Eggs were frequently used as a thickener or binder, along with bread crumbs, honey, and animal blood. The blood could be either from an animal that had been killed, or from a living animal that had been bled. Favorite fruits included grapes, pomegranates, quinces, figs, mulberries, apples, and pears; and the stone fruits: plums, cherries, and peaches. Like a Roman Martha Stewart, Apicius even provided serving tips: “An expensive silver platter would enhance the appearance of this dish materially,” he wrote at the end of a recipe composed of sow's belly and figpecker (a bird) breast seasoned with crushed pepper and lovage, sweetened with raisin wine, layered with thin pancakes, and topped with pine nuts.
There are even some medicinal recipes, like one for spiced salts that can be used “against indigestion, to move the bowels, against all illness, against pestilence as well as for the prevention of colds.” Apicius didn't need to include many medicinal recipes in his cookbook because a book explaining in detail the medicinal uses of 600 species of plants also appeared in the first century A.D. The Materia Medica, written by Dioscorides, was one of the major medical textbooks for over 1,000 years. The first century A.D. also produced Pliny's Naturalis Historia, which has several sections on the medicinal uses of plants and animals, even imaginary ones like dragons.
