Cookery and Dining in Imperial Rome

desired. Even in the absence of detailed specifications, the experienced practitioner will be able to divine correct proportions, by intuition. As a matter of fact, in cookery the mention in the right place of a single ingredient, like in poetry the right word, often suffices to conjure up before the gourmet's mental eye vistas of delight. Call it inspiration, association of ideas or what you please, a single word may often prove a guide, a savior. Let us remember that in Apicii days paper (parchment, papyrus) and writing materials were expensive and that, moreover, the ability of correct logical and literary expression was necessarily limited in the case of a practising cook who, after all, must have been the collector of the Apician formulæ. This is sufficiently proven by the _lingua coquinaria_, the vulgar Latin of our old work. In our opinion, the ancient author did not consider it worth his while to give anything but the most indispensable information in the tersest form. This he certainly did. A comparison of his literary performance with that of the artistic and accomplished writer of the Renaissance, Platina, will at once show up Apicius as a hard-working practical cook, a man who knew his business but who could not tell what he knew. Like ever so many of his successors, he could not refrain from beginning and concluding many of his articles with such superfluities as "take this" and "And serve," etc., all of which shows him up as a genuine cook. These articles, written in the most laconic language possible--the language of a very busy, very harassed, very hurried man, are the literary product of a cook, or several of them. The other chief motive for condensing or obscuring his text has a more subtle foundation. Indeed, we are surprised that we should possess so great a collection of recipes, representing to him who could use them certain commercial and social value. The preservation of Apicius seems entirely accidental. Experienced cooks were in demand in Apicii times; the valuation of their ministrations increased proportionately to the progress in gastronomy and to