Ancient Roman Cooking: Ingredients, Recipes, Sources

This was a gift and they loved it.

My son enjoyed this gift but the recipes aren't easy to do. Hard to find the ingredients. Interesting to read so he was happy.

I've been waiting to buy yhia for a while now, and I'm glad I did the English translation isn't 100% amazing but you get the gist and the recipes are 100% amazing. The recipes are from centuries ago though so you can't expect things like exact measurements and procedures as it was the first collection of chapters dedicated to the art of cooking. If you're looking for authentic ancient roman recipes with ingredients and a very nice history lesson then the book if for you and I highly recommend! If you're cooking here and expecting modern standardized ingredients with modern elevations then I suggest you go watch his YouTube channel (historical Italian cooking) and see what it's all about. Mediterranean cultures today share alot of the flavor profiles that these recipes offer. One of the best recipes in apicius are the roasted chickens, and after trying some on his YouTube channel I was able to get different balances of flavors by trying his suggested amounts. Carroway seed and go a VERY long way. The only things I'd disagree with is the use of some potential toxic herbs like Ruta(rue) and Penny royal! A safe substitute for ruta is tarragon, it's almost identical without the bitterness. But I'd be lying if I said I didn't want to try pennyroyal lol just once at least.. I usually sub with mint. But things like myrtle berry, laurel berries, and most importantly asafoetida (laser parthicum) are seriously good and transform the food in ways only the ancients could have known. You won't find laurel berry or myrtle berry easily or at all if you don't grow or know some one. Check etsy and get from Europe. Again this book good for knowledge and practical recipes to try not a 5 star restaurant run by Gordon Ramsey lol

I have been very excited to get this book, as I watch and enjoy the videos on YouTube. However upon receiving the book I discover it reeks of something scented, like it's been sprayed with some sort of perfume or air freshener. As a person who is sensitive to many scented products this is highly disappointing as I will have to leave it to air for several days before I can look at it. I don't know if this was sprayed to hide another smell or if it was a by-product of where it was being stored, but this is problematic for people with allergies and sensitivities.

Livro excelente para testar e reproduzir as receitas históricas. As dicas de substituições são muito boas. As receitas também são muito interessantes. Recomendo a quem quiser conhecer melhor a gastronomia da Roma Antiga.

Concise, the book swiftly provides ample information and an extensive amount of references to sources - thankworthily presented within the text, not in a list at the back of the book which you have to look for and browse, ending up with slipping a line (thus getting the wrong referral).

A great book for further understanding the Roman love of food and how they prepared their food compared to contemporary cooking practices.

IF any people reading this are expecting a decent cookbook you might get disappointed. About half of the book actually explains a lot of the resources used in roman cuisine, how they where used, etc, nothing wrong with that, however there is a complete absence of any pictures at all. IF I get a cookbook I would nowadays hope at least for some pictures to roughly figure out how to shape a certain cake or what something is supposed to look like, recipe books like these always make me feel like driving with a blindfold. You're gonna get there eventually following the instructions, but I am not sure if I will be happy with the result. The whole book rather feels like a completely historic approach instead of a cookbook, which sadly is a bit of a let down for me, I have baked libum and cato's placenta ( both honeycakes ) before, and I DO enjoy a lot of baking, but not if it's like this way. Also they didn't make any effort whatsoever to try to put some nice design in terms of "okay, we go this recipe in this chapter on this side, now on the next - " nope, if there's still space underneath the page the next recipe will start, no matter how confused and lost in it you will get. I study in the historic roman field so this okayish, but for the price I wouldn't accept it if I wouldn't know that there's professional literature about the field that costs way more. And this is what it technically is, this sadly does not really feel much about the joy of cooking for me. I also already noticed that there isn't a "lot" of recipes, there's no recipe for the octagon bread from pompeii or more specific stuff like that, the whole recipe part feels a bit small. If anyone here really had the thought of "oi, I wonder how that tasted like, I am going to recreate that" and wants to have decent picture sources, there's plenty of good sources in the internet if you just google the name of the dish and dig deep enough