Apicius and the First Cookbook

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.