APICIUS - A CRITICAL EDITION WITH AN INTRODUCTION AND ENGLISH TRANSLATION
SALLY GRAINGER
448 pp; 246x174mm; 12 b&w illustrations; hardback
ISBN 1903018137 £40
There have been many English translations of this work (and, abroad, some important academic editions) but none reliable since 1958 (Flower and Rosenbaum). In any case, this edition and translation has revisited all surviving manuscripts in Europe and the USA and proposes many new readings and interpretations. The great quality of this editorial team is while the Latin scholarship is supplied by Chris Grocock, Sally Grainger contributes a lifetime’s experience in the practical cookery of adaptations of the recipes in this text. This supplies a wholly new angle from which to verify the textual and editorial suggestions.
This volume supplies a fully referenced parallel text (Latin and English) of Apicius and of the excerpts from Apicius done by Vinidarius. There is an extensive introduction discussing both the art of cookery in the later Empire and the origins of this text, together with a new hypothesis as to its true date. There are then long appendixes discussing the vexed question of the true nature of the Roman store-sauces, garum and liquamem. There is also a full bibliography and extensive discussion of the meaning of technical terms found in the text. This book will set a new standard for Apician studies.
Christopher Grocock is a teacher of Latin; he was Project Direct at Bede’s World Museum in Jarrow ; he has edited for the OUP Historia Vie Hierosolimitane of Gilo of Paris as well as work by the Venerable Bede (forthcoming); he has contributed many papers to learnedjournals and conferences on medieval Latin studies. Sally Grainger is the author of The Classical Cookbook (with Andrew Dalby) for the British Museum. She is a leading reconstructionist cook and has produced classical and medieval meals for countless conferences and public gatherings.
